Nimet Ovayolu       Özlem Ovayolu Onur Çetinkaya

Aim: Nurses are in the appropriate position of role model due to their positive health behaviors. In addition, the provided healthcare service would be strong if this wide group was healthy. Therefore, this study was conducted in order to determine Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors (HLB) of nursing students.

Method: This descriptive study was conducted with students studying at nursing department of faculty of health sciences of a state university. While the population of the study consisted of all nursing students studying at the faculty; the sample consisted of a total of 349 first-second-third- and – fourth- year students who agreed to participate in the study.  Before starting the study, informed consent of students and written approval of the institution were obtained. The data of the study were collected by using questionnaire and HLB Scale II. The scale consists of 6 subscales including health responsibility, physical activity, nutrition, spiritual growth, interpersonal relations and stress management, as well as total score of the scale.  Total score to be obtained from the scale ranges between 52 and 208, high score indicates high health lifestyle behaviors.  The obtained data were evaluated by using student t, one way anova, and Kruskal-Wallis test.

Outcomes: It was determined that 69.6% of the students were in the age range  of 17-21 years, 73.4% were female, 36.1% were the first-year students, 51.0% assessed their health as good, 45.6% had routine medical screening within the last year, and 46.4% chose this profession “partially” voluntarily. Total mean scores obtained by the students from HLB scale was found to be 134.9±1.0. Mean scores of the students from interpersonal relations, nutrition, health responsibility, physical activity, stress management, and spiritual growth subscales were 25.5±0.2, 21.1±0.2, 21.8±0.2, 21.2±0.2, 21.5±0.1, and 23.4±0.2, respectively. The analyses revealed that those who assessed their health as “good”, were the first-year students, and women had the highest HLB score (p<0.05).

Conclusion and Recommendations: It was observed that HLB score of the students was low, especially score of stress management subscale was the lowest, and the score of interpersonal relations was the highest. Therefore, it can be asserted that students need to protect and maintain their own health and to be supported especially in terms of stress management.

Key Words: Nursing, healthy lifestyle behaviors, nursing students.

Correspondence: Nimet Ovayolu, PhD, RN, Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Science, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey (ovayolu@gantep.edu.tr).