Nurses’ Quality of Life and Healthy Behaviors

Abstract

Quality of life (QoL) is closely linked to the health status of the individual. In turn, health status strongly depends on lifestyle. Health behavior, which is defined as the actions and attitudes of a person that affect their physical and mental health, is one of many lifestyle components. The nursing community, which is exposed to a range of dangers associated with the job position and responsibilities of the nursing profession, has to contend with several negative impacts. This results in a decreased quality of life among the nursing staff and reduced effectiveness in providing care services to patients. Methods: This study was conducted using an online Google questionnaire, which was completed by 312 nurses nationwide. The questionnaire included questions about the respondents’ socio-demographic survey and included the Health Behavior Inventory (HBI) by Juczyński and the WHOQoL-BREF questionnaire. Results: The mean QoL reported by respondents was 3.65 points (SD = 0.67), meaning that QoL ranked between good and average results. The respondents’ mean rating of their own health was 3.58 points (SD = 0.79), indicating that they rated their health status between satisfactory and average. Low health-behavior prevalence was reported by 139 of the 312 survey participants (44.55%), while 111 respondents (35.58%) had average health-behavior prevalence and 62 (19.87%) had high health-behavior prevalence. Each of the QoL domains correlated significantly (p ˂ 0.05) and positively (r ˃ 0) with the total HBI score and all its subscales. Conclusions: Higher quality of life improves the level of health behavior by nursing staff. Obesity lowers the quality of life in physical, psychological, and social domains. The psychological sphere was the best-rated quality of life domain by nurses. A good material situation for nurses has a positive effect on their quality of life.