Assessment of healthy lifestyle and wellbeing status among the employees of a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Background and Aims: Individual barriers to change in lifestyle include lack of proper knowledge particularly about nutrition and physical activity, lack of acceptance to change behaviour, lack of self-motivation and lastly physical and socioeconomic limitations. Methods: This is a prospective, questionnaire based study conducted at a tertiary care hospital between May and August of 2019. A total of 777 employees working at different professional levels were enrolled in to the study. All the enrolled employees were subjected to a detailed questionnaire consisting of various dimensions of health which includes physical health, mental health, social health, spiritual health and intellectual health dimension. Results: The mean age of the study group was 37.38 ± 9.74 years (range: 17-68 years). Among the participants, 42.1% are male and 57.9% are female. Most of the study participants are practicing moderate physical activity (67.6%). Current smokers and alcoholics are 2.1% and 9.3% respectively. Diabetes and hypertension was seen in 7.3% and 9.7% respectively. The overall wellbeing showed that 40.8% of the staff are having good wellbeing and 31.5% showed some wellbeing risks. Outstanding wellbeing score was observed in 22.9% and only in 4.8% showed serious health risks related to their wellbeing. Conclusion: The overall wellbeing in healthcare staff is good at our tertiary care hospital. Majority of the staff showing risks with regards to their physical wellbeing due to poor exercise practices and abnormal food intake behaviour. Joint family system was found to be a factor for better mental health wellbeing among healthcare staff. Practicing exercise, meditation, yoga and controlling abnormal food intake leads to further wellbeing improvement.