Abstract
Health professionals who engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors are more likely to promote their patients’ health. We evaluated health status, behaviors, and beliefs of students (future health professionals) and staff in four health sciences faculties, Kuwait University. In total, 600 students and 231 staff participated in this descriptive cross-sectional study. Questionnaire surveys were used to evaluate lifestyle-related practices and participants’ beliefs about these practices, in addition to health-related objective measures, e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, and body mass index. Overweight/obesity was prevalent among the participants (staff, 68.7%, students, 48.1%; p < 0.001); 57% of staff had suboptimal resting blood pressures. About half of the participants reported being moderately physically active (staff, 44.8%, students, 52.6%; p < 0.05), and most reported moderate/high stress (staff, 88.8%, students, 90.9%; p > 0.05). Only 25.1% of staff and 27.9% of students reported at least 8 h sleep nightly (p > 0.05). Staff reported healthier dietary practices than students (p-value range < 0.001–0.02). Overall, the participants had sub-optimal health indices. A marked gap existed between participants’ beliefs about healthy lifestyle practices and their actual health status. Healthy lifestyle programs are needed on campus with respect to diet, exercise, and stress management. As emerging health professionals, students in health sciences faculties, Kuwait University, need exposure to a health-promoting environment including healthy staff as role models.
Highlights
Health is a function of personal and environmental factors that reflects physical, mental, and social well-being [1,2]
Given health professionals who engage in healthy lifestyle practices themselves are more likely to engage in health promotion with patients clinically, we chose to investigate the health of health sciences students—i.e., emerging health professionals—and staff, given the latter are central to students’
Based on 831 participants, our findings confirm the presence of sub-optimal health practices and non-communicable disease risk factors for students and staff studying and working at the health sciences campus, Kuwait University
Summary
Health is a function of personal and environmental factors that reflects physical, mental, and social well-being [1,2]. Health professionals have a responsibility to serve as role models for their patients, given they can influence the health status of thousands of individuals and their families over their careers [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Their poor personal health practices [9] tend to resemble those of the general population rather than being superior, as might be predicted by virtue of their professional career choice [10]. Public Health 2020, 17, 8776; doi:10.3390/ijerph17238776 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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