The Effect of Nurses Coronavirus Fear on Health Promoting and Protective Behaviors

Abstract

Background: It Fear that individuals experience is effective on health promoting behaviors. Thus, it is believed that the fear of Covid-19 experienced by nurses who are primarily responsible for patient care in the pandemic process, affects health promoting and protective health behaviors. The study was conducted to determine the impact of nurses’ fear of the coronavirus on health promoting and protective health behaviors. Materials and Methods: The descriptive study was carried out with nurses working in a university hospital. The sample comprised 301 nurses. In collection of the data the introductory information form, fear of the coronavirus scale and health promoting and protective health behaviors scale were used. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics (number, percentage, mean), independent groups t test, analysis of variance, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis analysis and correlation analysis were performed. Results: The nurses obtained 25.20±5.49 points from the fear of the coronavirus scale and 85.29±8.63 points from the health promoting and protective health behaviors scale on average. A moderately signifi-cant correlation existed between the score averages of the fear of the coronavirus scale and health pro-moting and protective health behaviors scale in a positive direction.Conclusions: As a consequence, it was seen that the nurses’ score averages of the fear of the coronavirus scale and health promoting and protective health behaviors scale were not up to the mark. In addition, considering that a moderate correlation exists between the fear of the coronavirus and health promoting and protective health behaviors; it can be recommended to conduct interventions to reduce the fear of the coronavirus. Key Words: Fear of the coronavirus, Health promoting and protective health behaviors, Nurse