Association of Long Duty Hours and Unhealthy Dietary Habits among Nurses at Private and Public Sector in Karachi, Pakistan

Authors

  • Zarina Shafi
  • Shireen Arif
  • Alia Nasir

Keywords:

Long duty hours; unhealthy dietary habits; nurses; skipping meals; non-communicable diseases; Pakistan

Abstract

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.

Downloads

Published

29-04-2020

How to Cite

1.
Shafi Z, Arif S, Nasir A. Association of Long Duty Hours and Unhealthy Dietary Habits among Nurses at Private and Public Sector in Karachi, Pakistan. J Liaq Uni Med Health Sci [Internet]. 2020 Apr. 29 [cited 2024 Nov. 8];19(01):55-61. Available from: http://ojs.lumhs.edu.pk/index.php/jlumhs/article/view/277

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 01 (2020): Journal of Liaquat University of Medical & Health Sciences

Section

Original Articles

License

Submission of a manuscript to the journal implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the undertaking form or the Terms and Conditions.

When an article is accepted for publication, the author(s) retain the copyright and are required to grant the publisher the right of first publication and other non-exclusive publishing rights to JLUMHS.

Articles published in the Journal of Liaquat University of Medical & health sciences are open access articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial - Share Alike 4.0 License. This license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium; provided the original work is properly cited and initial publication in this journal. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. In addition to that users are allowed to remix, tweak and build upon the work non-commercially as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. Or, in certain cases it can be stated that all articles and content there in are published under creative commons license unless stated otherwise.