Zarina Shafi, Shireen Arif, Alia Nasir.
Association of Long Duty Hours and Unhealthy Dietary Habits among Nurses at Private and Public Sector in Karachi, Pakistan.
J Liaquat Uni Med Health Sci Jan ;19(1):55-61.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the associations between long duty hours and unhealthy dietary habits among nurses at private and public sector in Karachi, Pakistan METHODOLOGY: In this cross-sectional analytical design 300 nurses were randomly selected from private and public hospitals between months of October to December 2017. The data was collected through structured questionnaire developed by Aryee PA 2013 containing two portions. The first part asks about the demographic data including age, sex, marital status and ethnicity, whereas, the second part asks about the anthropometry, job schedule, physical activity and dietary habits of the respondents. RESULTS: The mean age of 300 study subjects was 30.78�8.47 years. Among them 61% nurses were working as long duty hours. Nurses working in private sectors are more involved in the long duty hours rather than nurses working in public sectors. Body Mass Index (BMI) of nurses was significantly relevant with the long duty hours (P-value <0.05). The mean BMI of nurses with long duty hours were BMI=25.78�7.35. Long duty hours were associated with skipping meal through Mann Whitney U test, which was significant with P-value ? 0.05. BMI and age of participants was negatively correlated with duty hours i.e. -0.116 & -0.239 respectively. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, long duty hours are associated with the unhealthy dietary habits of the nurses. The study recommended that nurses must reflect on their dietary habits to stay healthy and prevent from non-communicable diseases. Nurse Managers should work efficiently so workload of nurses could minimize and could reduce their duty hours. KEYWORDS: Long duty hours; unhealthy dietary habits; nurses; skipping meals; non-communicable diseases; Pakistan

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com