Lifestyle Behaviors among Nursing Students in Hawler Medical University

Abstract

Background and objective: The importance of proper nutrition and physical activity in reducing rates of disease and death from chronic diseases has been well established. Poor diet and physical inactivity cause deaths and are major contributors to disabilities that result from diabetes, obesity, and stroke. Drug abuse is a more intense and misuse of drugs can result in addiction. The objectives of this study were to identify lifestyle behaviours among students and to find out association between their lifestyles and some variables (sex, stage, and body mass index) in the College of Nursing in Erbil City. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 students from four stages in the College of Nursing (25 students from each stage) during the period December 2016 to April 2017. A questionnaire was composed of two parts, socio-demographic characteristics and questions related to lifestyle behaviors (three domains) among students in the college. Frequency, percentage and chi-square test was used for interpretation of data. Results: Most of the study sample was aged between 18 and 24 years old from urban areas. Near half of them was female and the highest percentage had normal weight based on body mass index assessment tool. There is a non-significant association between lifestyle behaviors and sex among the study sample (p-value 0.312, 0.346 and 0.385 respectively) and with body mass index inactivity and nutrition (p-value 0.885 and 0.060 respectively). Conclusion: Most of the students sometimes practicing the different types of physical activities and exercises

Keywords

• Lifestyle behaviors; Activity domain; Habit