A study by a group of researchers from Hamad Medical Corporation ( HMC) has revealed that healthcare employees in the country moderately follow health-promoting lifestyle behaviours.
The study published on Qatar Medical Journal and featured on Qscience, part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press was conducted by Shamja Sofia Razzakh, Rajvir Singh, Bilal Uddin Khan and Nesiya Hassan, who work with various departments of HMC .
The aim of the study, titled, ‘The health-promoting lifestyle behaviours of healthcare employees in Qatar – A cross-sectional comparative study’ was to compare the health-promoting lifestyle of at-risk and non-risk groups of employees working in HMC, the largest secondary and tertiary healthcare provider in Qatar.
This was a cross-sectional comparative research study of all categories of healthcare employees working in HMC facilities. Participants with a body mass index (BMI) >30, smokers, or those with pre-existing non-communicable diseases were classified as the at-risk group, and individuals without any of these factors were classified as the non-risk group. Data were collected through an online survey using an adopted scale, Adolescent Health Promotion Short Form (AHP-SF), after approval by the Institutional Review Board of HMC.
The age of the participants ranged from 22 to 69 years and the majority of them were female (64.07%). Most of the respondents were overweight or obese, accounting for 42.99% and 26.68% of the sample, respectively. Interestingly, 87.64% of the participants were non-smokers and approximately 70% had no chronic diseases.
Five subdomains – nutrition, social support, health responsibility, exercise, and stress management – of the AHP-SF scale showed no significant statistical differences between at-risk and non-risk groups. However, the “life appreciation” scale showed significant statistical differences between the at-risk and non-risk groups. The AHP-SF scores varied significantly across the participants’ regions of origin, with Americans having the highest score compared to other regions.
The study has revealed that the healthcare employees moderately practise health-promoting lifestyle behaviours. The lowest scores were in the exercise subdomain, suggesting that more interventions are required to improve these behaviours. Healthcare organisations are ideal settings to implement comprehensive workplace wellness programmes and awareness campaigns that can motivate employees to take greater responsibility for their own health and influence the wider community to adopt health-promoting lifestyle behaviours.
This was a cross-sectional comparative research study of all categories of healthcare employees working in HMC facilities.
