Health promoting behaviors and factors related to lifestyle among Turkish workers and occupational health nurses' responsibilities in their health promoting activities

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to describe health-promotion lifestyle profile of 264 Turkish workers, to determine the factors which affect their lifestyle and to describe occupational health nurses' responsibilities in their health promoting activities to compare their profile with those published from other studies using Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile. This is a descriptive study. Study was conducted in a food industry. 530 workers are working in this workplace. Approximately fifty percent of the workers participated in this study. The convenience sample composed of 264 workers. Data were collected using a questionnaire about socio-demographic features developed by the investigators and Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile developed by Walker et al. Subscales with the highest means in this study were interpersonal support and self-actualization. Compared to workers reported from other studies, Turkish workers got low scores of self-actualization, nutrition, interpersonal support and stress management. There was no statistically significant difference between total scores and gender, marital status and education. However, there was a statistically significant difference between age and exercise and nutrition. Moreover, as income increased, so did health promoting behaviors. There was a statistically significant difference between perceived health status and importance placed on health and overall health promoting life style and each health promoting behavior. It is important that occupational health nurses identify health behaviors, perceived health status and cultural aspects likely to affect health behaviors among workers. Thus, they may develop effective tools to protect and promote workers' health.