Nurses as role models in health promotion: Piloting the acceptability of a social marketing campaign

An Analysis Through to Congruence Between Real and Self-Perceived Body Mass Index in Nursing Students

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES

Overweight and obesity are growing concerns that also affect nursing staff, healthcare professionals that play a critical role in public health awareness and intervention. This study aimed to define the health parameters associated with body weight, analyze if there is an erroneous self-perception of overweight/obesity through the distortion of body weight perception, and determine the predictive factors of body weight distortion.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study of 224 nursing students gathered anthropometric and demographic data. Self-perceived body weight was assessed using Stunkard and Stellar's scale. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression identified significant predictors of weight distortion.

RESULTS

The analysis found that men reported greater weight discrepancies than women. Specifically, 57% of the men (28 of 49 participants) underestimated their real BMI, while only 23% of the women (40 of 175 participants) did so. Age, sex, and weight classification emerged as significant explanatory variables for the distortion of body weight perception.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate a significant vulnerability among nursing students to the misperception of their own body weight status, highlighting the need for targeted training strategies. These strategies should focus on correcting misperceptions of obesity among health professionals throughout their working life to improve future obesity prevention efforts for society.

Applying health promotion knowledge to self-care: healthy eating and weight management for nurses

Promoting health in the workplace is a national and international public health priority, and health promotion is a central aspect of the nursing role. However, nurses' knowledge of health promotion does not always translate to self-care and there are barriers to some aspects of self-care at work, such as healthy eating. Evidence suggests that rates of overweight and obesity in nurses are relatively high and commensurate with the general population, which has implications for their health and well-being and their delivery of health promotion to patients. This article discusses health in the workplace and some of the evidence on overweight and obesity among nurses, including how this may influence their health promotion practice. The author also considers barriers and enablers to nurses' healthy eating at work and suggests some approaches that individual nurses and healthcare organisations can take to improve healthy eating.

Online education and improvement of caring behaviors of nurses in pediatric wards: a quasi-experimental study

BACKGROUND

Nurses working in pediatric wards should communicate with children well and have appropriate caring behaviors according to the age of their patients, so distance education is very suitable for them due to its availability. This study aimed to determine the effect of online education on the principles of pediatric nursing care on the caring behaviors of nurses working in pediatric wards.

METHODS

This interventional (quasi-experimental) study used a simple random method to select 70 nurses working in pediatric wards and pediatric intensive care units in Kerman. The nurses in the intervention group received online training in the sky room three days a week, while nurses in the control group received routine pediatric care. The study instruments were the demographic information questionnaire and the Caring behaviors Questionnaire, which were completed by two groups before and one month after the intervention. Data were analyzed with SPSS 25. The significance level was set at P < 0.05.

RESULTS

The independent samples t-test indicated no significant differences in the mean scores of care behaviors between the intervention (256.61 ± 5.16) and control groups (257.52 ± 3.99) before the intervention (P = 0.23) but indicated a significant difference in the mean scores of caring behaviors between the intervention (275.69 ± 6.52) and control groups (254.21 ± 3.15) after the intervention. Therefore, online education increased the score of caring behaviors in the intervention group.

CONCLUSION

Distance education had an impact on the caring behaviors of nurses in pediatric wards and we recommend the use of e-learning to improve the caring behaviors and the quality of care of nurses.

Nurses' role model duties for health and COVID-19 pandemic precautions

Role modelling communicates a standard of behavior to another person. Silent role modelling occurs when this standard can be communicated without articulating reasons for the action; articulate role modelling occurs when it is necessary to articulate reasons in order to effectively role model the standard of behavior, and to avoid misinterpretation. Nurses are role models in virtue of the respect and admiration given to the nursing profession. As such, nurses have role model obligations. This paper examines nurses' role model obligations for healthy behaviors and pandemic precautions. Research often identifies nurses as role models for healthy behavior, despite the fact that nurses are typically no healthier than the general population. This paper argues that nurses do not have a duty to role model healthy behaviors. The ability to adopt healthy behaviors is affected by numerous personal and individual factors. For a nurse to share their struggles to adopt healthy behaviors as articulate 'imperfect' role models violates their right to privacy. By contrast, nurses do have a moral duty to role model pandemic precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as correctly wearing appropriate masks, maintaining social distancing, avoiding gatherings of multiple households when pandemic precautions are not being taken, and staying up to date on vaccination. Nurses' duty to role model pandemic precautions does not involve sharing any personal information. Nurses have a duty to be silent role models when the risk of misinterpretation is low, and a duty to be articulate role models, who explicitly communicate reasons for the role modelled behavior, when necessary to ensure they are not misinterpreted. When articulate role modelling goes beyond the minimal role modelling duty, and imposes a comparative cost to the nurse, articulate role modelling is not obligatory, but supererogatory.

Promoting healthy eating in nurses

Across the world obesity rates in the general population have been increasing in recent years, a trend that has also been seen among nurses. Alongside the negative health effects of obesity such as type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease, the condition affects an individual's ability to work and results in increasing rates of absenteeism. However, the nature of nursing shift patterns and the healthcare workplace itself can influence a nurse's ability to eat healthily. This article discusses how obesity and healthy eating can affect the nursing role, as well as examining leadership and management practices that can support healthy eating in the workplace. The article is aimed at supporting nurse managers to reflect on their own lifestyle behaviour, which in turn will enable them to engage more with the topic of healthy eating among staff.