The Factors Associated with the Abnormal Eating Behavior in University Hospital's Nurses

Ji, Young Geon; Kim, Su Jin; Kang, Hyung Gon

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
To compare eating behavior according to the shift work and to find the factors associated with the abnormal eating behavior in university hospital's nurses.
METHODS
For this assessment, a cross-sectional study was conducted with 300 university hospital's nurses. Nurses were questioned with self-reported questionnaire forms. After excluding cases with incomplete data, 276 cases are enrolled in the study. To find the factors associated with the abnormal eating behavior, we conducted multiple logistic regression analysis.
RESULTS
The proportions of shift work nurses were 63.77%(176 cases). The proportions of abnormal eating behavior among shift work nurses were 22.73%(40 cases), but only 6.00%(6 cases) among non-shift work nurses had the abnormal eating behavior. Considering the shift work period, the proportions of abnormal eating behavior were 31.25%, 22.92% and 17.50% in case of shift work period were less than 1 year, 1~3 years and more than 3 years, respectively. The abnormal eating behavior was associated with having shift work, doing exercise, more weekly working hours, being on a diet and having perception of overweight. But age and body mass index were not influenced the abnormal eating behavior.
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we found that the factors associated with the abnormal eating behavior are the shift work, exercise, weekly working hours, perception of overweight and diet.