According to "General Plan for People's Health Promotion Policies" published by Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2005, it can be known that the policies focus on preventive health management and control of various chronic diseases for people's balanc...
According to "General Plan for People's Health Promotion Policies" published by Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2005, it can be known that the policies focus on preventive health management and control of various chronic diseases for people's balanced health conditions and life quality, and thus, nurses' roles and responsibilities are being expanded and increased to meet the changing environment of healthcare and medical services.
The purpose of this study was to survey the nurses for their health promoting behaviors and analyze the relationship between such behaviors and sense of self-efficacy and thereby, provide for some basic data useful to prevention of the health problems caused possibly by undesirable living habits and development of health promotion programs for nurses in the future.
For this study, the researcher sampled 317 nurses working for university hospital and general hospital both in Seoul and a university hospital in Gyeonggi Province. A total of 317 copies of questionnaire were distributed to be filled anonymously, and 298 ones (94%) were returned. 16 responses deemed not sincere were excluded and thus 282 (88.9%) responses were used for analysis.
The questionnaire was designed to be structured. It consisted of a total of 90 questions: 13 about nurses' demographic variables, 60 about their health promoting behaviors and 17 about their sense of self-efficacy. Due to the policies of the sample hospitals, the researcher personally contacted the senior nurses of each ward at 2 hospitals for distribution of the questionnaire, and at one hospital, the researcher asked the educator of nursing department to distribute it. The data were collected for 16 days from August 31 through September 15, 2006.
The data collected were processed using the SPSS PC 12.0 program for frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient, t-test, ANOVA, Duncan's ex post facto test and Multiple Stepwise Regression analysis.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
1) Nurses' health Promoting behaviors scored 3.07 on average. Breaking down into the sub-areas, the sub-area which scored highest was hygienic life 3.83, followed by harmonious relationship 3.54, emotional support 3.40, dietary control 3.35, self-realization 3.20, health food 3.02, recess and sleeping 2.88, exercise and activities 2.78, regular meals 2.43 and professional healthcare 2.33 in their order.
2) Nurses' sense of self-efficacy scored 3.56 on average. The sub-area which scored highest was conviction 3.68, followed by achievement 3.62, putting into practice 3.60, effort-making 3.49 and unyielding will despite ordeal 3.42 in their order.
3) As a result of analyzing the correlations among variables, it was found that nurses' health promoting behaviors were positively correlated with their sense of self-efficacy. Such a finding suggests that the higher a nurse's sense of self-efficacy is, her health promoting behaviors are more active.
4) Nurses' sense of self-efficacy explained about 29.5% of their entire health promoting behaviors, while effort-making and level of achievement were positively correlated with health promoting behaviors. (respectively, β=.516, p<.001 and β=.250, p<.01).
Summing up, nurses were found to practice hygienic life most (3.83) but neglect the regular meals (2.43) and health control (2.33). In terms of sense of self-efficacy, they were highly convinced of their self-efficacy (3.68), but were less willing to surmount any hardship (3.24). Namely, our nurses were less positive towards their health promotion and practice, which might impede their health promoting behaviors and sense of self-efficacy as well.
Based on the above findings, the researcher put forwards the following suggestions. First, since the size of sample (nurses working for 2 university hospitals and a general hospitals) was too small to generalize the results of this study, future studies are requested to use large samples and repeat the procedures of this study. Second, it is necessary to develop a program conducive to enhancement of nurses' health promoting behaviors and their sense of self-efficacy.