Poster Presentation

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
9:45 AM - 10:30 AM

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
11:45 AM - 12:30 PM

Thursday, July 10, 2008
9:45 AM - 10:30 AM

Thursday, July 10, 2008
2:30 PM - 3:15 PM
This presentation is part of : POSTERS: Nursing Workforce
An Exploration of Nurses Physical Fitness and Its Related Factors in a Medical Center
Chi Wang, MSN, RN, Nursing Department, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan and Chung H. Chen, PhD, RN, College of Nursing, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Learning Objective #1: This research discussion Nurse's Physical fitness, the findings expectation can : (1)provides the correlation unit is suitable as the promotion Nurse Physical fitness can the reference.
Learning Objective #2: (2)discovery latent nurse disease dangerous factor, thus shifts to an earlier time the involvement treatment.

Physical fitness play an important role in performing job requirement, responding to emergencies, enjoying recreational activities, and maintaining a good quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the current physical fitness of nurses and the variables related to their “health status”, “exercise behavior” and “emotional labor”. Questionnaires and physiological monitoring were used in this study.

A total of 222 participants were randomly selected from the nurses at a medical center in Taiwan. Our results indicated that, (1) 24.8% of the subjects exercised regularly; (2) compared with the norms, subjects demonstrated reductions of 33.3% in cardiopulmonary fitness, 42.8% in flexibility, 39.9% in muscular endurance, 36.2% and 23.1% in muscular strength of lower limbs and upper limbs, respectively;(3) body mass index showed that 14.5% of the subjects were overweight and 15.4% of them were obese;(4) there was no statistically significant correlation between perceived health status and physical fitness;(5) there was a significant positive correlation between “emotional labor” and body mass index;(6) “emotional labor” was negatively correlated with the muscular strength of upper limbs.

Based on these results, we recommend that the administrators of the hospital focus on the training of nursing staff in order to reduce “emotional labor” and actively assist and encourage the development of the nursing staff's “exercise behavior”. Additionally, individual nurses should steadfastly control their weight and diligently develop a habit of regular exercise.