Examination of healthy lifestyle behaviors of students of Vocational School of Health

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to determine the healthy lifestyle behaviors (HLSB) of the students of Bingöl Vocational School of Health, who did summer internship at Bingöl State Hospital, and the factors affecting the HLBS.
Materials and methods: Between 10 August 2015 and 11 September 2015, a total of 112 (50 males, 62 females; mean age 16.6±1.1 years) out of 120 students of vocational high school of health, who did summer internship at Bingöl State Hospital were included in the scope of this study, which characterized as descriptive (Response rate: 93.3%). We asked the participants questions regarding the assessment of socio-demographic characteristics and several factors that are thought likely to affect healthy lifestyle behaviors, and we applied a survey covering the HLSB scale questions. HLSB scale is a scale inquiring the healthy lifestyle behaviors, consisting of 48 questions, divided into six sub-components with the options “never, sometimes, often and regularly”, and the lowest score is 48, the highest 192.
Results: We calculated the general mean of HLSB scale of the students to be 126.9±28.7 points. While HLSB scale mean scores were not found statistically different according to gender, income status, family type and whether there is smoking habits in the family (p>0.05), a significant difference was found between eating habits and self-realization HLSB sub-components in accordance with the areas studied at high school (p<0.05). Consequently, eating habits and self-realization scores were higher among the students studying emergency medicine technicianship compared to those studying nursing and we found this difference to be statistically significant (p<0.05).
Conclusion: We found the healthy lifestyle behaviors of the students of Bingöl Vocational School of Health to be moderate. We thought that, although the students receive education at a school associated with health, not adequate awareness was raised about healthy lifestyle behaviors. Therefore, students’ comprehending the importance of healthy lifestyle behaviors and applying these in daily life should be supported.