Actual Status of Healthy Lifestyle Habits of Public Health Nurses in Japan

Background: The public health nurse should make efforts to keep his/her own mental and physical health good, which is the professional responsibility. However, a variety of challenging issues have been pointed out with regard to well-being of healthcare professionals. Public health nurses are likely to face some difficulties in their habits of leading healthy lifestyles. The purpose of this study was to identify how Japanese public health nurses actually live their healthy lives. Methods: This study covered 1725 public health nurses in the Chugoku/Shikoku Region. We conducted an anonymous self-completed questionnaire survey. As basic attributes, the following 6 categories were set. The health practice indices used in this research consisted of the 7 practices of Breslow’s Health Practice Index (B-HPI), the Morimoto’s 8 practices, and 6 practices related to lifestyle habits that have been developed independently by the authors of this research (Health Lifestyle Index (HLI)), that is, 16 practices in total. The study plan was approved by the Ethics Committee of Okayama University. Results: We analyzed the 960 (55.7%) valid responses. This survey has demonstrated that the healthy life-style practices of public health nurses are generally good. However, there were some practices such as eating between meals, having little physical activity, and not having a good rest/sleep, that need to be improved. None of the assessment tools correlated with the length of experience. Conclusions: This survey has clarified that the healthy lifestyle practices of public health nurses did not correlated with their length of experience, indicating that the healthy lifestyle practices are not intensified by the accumulated career experience as public health nurses.