Health, lifestyle and health care utilization among health professionals

Abstract

Health care workers are responsible for the execution of the health policy of a nation, yet little if any empirical evidence is there on health, lifestyle, health choices, and health conditions of health care workers in the rural parish of Hanover, Jamaica. The current study examines health, lifestyle and health behaviour among health professional in Hanover. The current study has a sample of 212 respondents. A 26- item questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data from the questionnaires were coded and entered into a micro-computer and analysis done using SPSS for Widows Version 15.0 soft- ware. The Chi-square test was used to test association between non-metric variables. A p-value < 0.05 (two-tailed) was selected to indicate statistical significance. It was found that 16.0% of respondents had diabetes mellitus (2.8% of males compared to 19.8% females); 22.6% had hypertension (25.5% of female and 12.8% of males); 0.5% breast cancer; 0.5% stomach cancer; 1.9% enlarged heart; and 0.5% ischemic heart disease. Forty-three percentage points of the sample was overweight, 33.5% obese and 24.1% had a normal weight. Over 15% of nurses and doctors were obese compared to 38% of ancillary staffers. Twenty percentage points of respondents consume alcohol on a regular basis; 15.6% do no regular physical exercise, 42.4% add sweetening to their hot beverages, and 4.7% were smokers. There is a need for public health practitioners to formulate a health intervention programme that will target people in Hanover, but also specific groups such as doctors, nurses, administrative, ancillary staffers and technical staffers.