A survey of the nation's 126 medical schools found that medical students receive little to no training in how to help patients stop smoking. The results of the study were published in this month's Journal of the American Medical Association. Medical licensing exams don't include many questions on tobacco use or cessation. Therefore medical schools don't think it's important, according to Dr. Linda Ferry, the associate professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine who conducted the study. What's more, most insurance programs don't reimburse doctors for helping patients quit smoking. Consequently, doctors pressured by HMOs to see large numbers of patients each day can't afford to spend the four to six hours of treatment it takes, on average, to help a smoker quit. That means that doctors are effectively unable to address the main health problem of many of their patients.