Abstract
Nursing students will be future health promoters, but they may not always adopt the recommended healthy lifestyle. Currently, there are insufficient studies examining the health-promoting lifestyles of Chinese nursing students, and the impact of socio-economic status and health-promoting lifestyle on their health. This was a cross-sectional survey. Data were collected from nursing students studying in pre-registration nursing programs of a university in Hong Kong. The survey was conducted through a self-administered questionnaire that solicited information regarding their socio-economic status, health-promoting lifestyle, quality of life, and perceptions of the barriers to adopting a health-promoting lifestyle.FindingsA total of 538 students returned completed questionnaires for analysis. Among the health-promoting lifestyle subscales, the participants performed best in interpersonal relations and worst in physical activity, and the vast majority of them did not actively engage in health-risk behaviors. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that only 5% of the variance in quality of life was explained by socio-economic variables, whereas a total of 24% of the variance was explained when health-promoting lifestyle variables were added. In particular, health responsibility, physical activity, spiritual growth, and stress management were statistically significant predictors of quality of life. Early concerns about how prepared nurses are to take on the role of promoting health still apply today. School administrators should plan the nursing curriculum to include activities that encourage student nurses to participate in health-promoting lifestyles. Future studies are needed to explore the barriers that prevent students from practicing health-promoting behavior.
Highlights
Lifestyle refers to the ways in which individuals live that could affect their health
This study identified the patterns of Healthpromoting lifestyles (HPLs), health-risk behavior, and quality of life (QOL) among a group of Chinese nursing students and provided evidence of the effects of socio-economic status and HPL on QOL
Different dimensions of HPL such as health responsibility, exercise, spiritual growth, and stress management are significantly associated with the QOL of nursing students
Summary
Lifestyle refers to the ways in which individuals live that could affect their health. While health and lifestyle are closely related, one of the major purposes of the WHO’s 2013–2020 Action Plan for the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable diseases is to strengthen the capacity of individuals and populations to make healthier choices and follow lifestyle patterns that foster good health (WHO, 2013). Several studies showed contradictory results, indicating that nursing students had healthier or at least comparable habits to those of non-nursing students (Shriver and Scott-Stiles, 2000; Can et al, 2008) Those results can mainly be attributed to socio-economic status, with age, gender, nationality, years of study, marital status, and family income, in particular, having been found to correlate closely with the HPL profiles of nursing students (Al‐Kandari and Vidal, 2007; Can et al, 2008; Wei et al, 2012). Other factors contributing to the contradictory results may be methodological, including sample size, the timing of the collecting of data, and measurement issues related to the instruments that were used in the study
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
