The effect of a workplace health promotion program in nurses: a repeated measures design

Abstract

There is evidence that workplace health promotion programs that support healthy living conditions protect and improve employees’ health. Nevertheless, studies on the holistic evaluation of health behaviors and cardiovascular risk management in nurses are limited. Reflecting on this, we designed a workplace health promotion program based on the components of the Health Promotion Model and evaluated its effect on healthy behaviors and cardiovascular risk in female nurses. A repeated measures design with a pretest-posttest control group framework was used. The study included 72 female nurses, 32 in the experimental and 40 in the control group. A six-month-long intervention consisting of group training, moderate-intensity AeroPilates exercise, and individual counseling was carried out within the scope of the workplace health development program. In data analysis, 2 (group) × 3 (measurement time) repeated measures analysis of variance was employed to examine the effect of the intervention on the dependent variables. Following the nursing interventions implemented within the scope of the workplace health promotion program, the healthy lifestyle behaviors and the mean physical activity and nutrition scores of the nurses in the experimental group increased significantly, and the program was found to be effective in reducing nurses’ cardiovascular risk, with a significant decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure.Implementing and sustaining workplace health promotion programs designed based on the health promotion model is recommended to improve the health behaviors and cardiovascular risk management of nurses working in hospitals with intensive working hours in a shift system.