Healthy lifestyle among primary health care professionals

OBJECTIVE: To assess 4 main determinants of healthy lifestyle (smoking, diet, physical activity, and body mass index) among primary health care professionals.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out between December 2012 and February 2013 where participants were selected using a stratified-random sampling method from 4 primary care centers in King Abdulaziz Medical City, National Guard Health Affairs, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A trained nurse used an approved questionnaire for data collection.

RESULTS: The study included 322 participants from different health professions in 4 family medicine centers. The prevalence of smoking was 8.4%. Most of the participants (75.1%) scored more than 50% for healthy diet. Only 38.8% of the participants have normal body mass index, and 21.1% were physically active.

CONCLUSION: Our primary health care professionals are not up to the expected level of healthy lifestyle parameters. Health care professionals in the primary care setting and in other health facilities need to be targeted by health promotion programs for their own health benefits, and better role modeling for their patients.