Satisfaction With Daily Life, BMI, Perception of Weight, and Nutritional Intake in Undergraduate Nursing Students

Background: Creating a culture of self-care among nursing students is vital to the physical and mental health of future nurses who will be caring for our nation. Research indicates that current practicing nurses often have sub-optimal physical and mental health (Melnyk et al, 2017). Specifically, nurses have higher rates of depression, compassion fatigue, and burnout, and exhibit less healthy lifestyle behaviors and work-life balance (Priano, Hong, & Chen, 2017). It is critical for nursing students to be taught how to form a healthy foundation of self-care including maintaining a healthy body mass index, developing eating habits conducive to a healthy weight, and making time to find satisfaction with daily life. Research evidence posits that self-care training can help improve the likelihood that nursing students will be successful in their roles as future nurses caring for others (Bartlett, Taylor, & Nelson, 2015). The purpose of the current study was to examine nursing student satisfaction with daily life by obtaining self-report data on height and weight (BMI), the perception of weight, and current eating behaviors.

Methods: After Institutional Review Board approval, a cross-sectional, correlational study was conducted in spring 2018 with N=215 undergraduate university nursing students through an anonymous online survey. Measures included: BMI calculated from height and weight (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017); a portion of the BUCS: Live Well Survey (Lee, 2013), which examines satisfaction with daily life (7 questions); perception of weight; current attempts to lose weight; healthy eating habits (3 questions), and nutritional intake behaviors over the last 30 days from a detailed list of food items. The analysis included descriptive, multinomial logistic regression, correlations, and structural equation modeling analysis.

Results: Most participants were female (92.2%), White (71.6%), and lived on campus (54%). Almost half of the nursing students (44.9%) were in the overweight, obese, or extremely obese categories. Nursing students who were satisfied with daily life had higher odds of being in the “about right weight” category, being in the normal BMI category, and eating healthy foods, and they consumed less alcohol and energy drinks.

Conclusions: To create a culture of wellness that may lead to satisfaction with daily life for students while in nursing school, it is important to help students to improve healthy habits such as increasing consumption of healthy foods and decreasing consumption of alcohol and energy drinks. These changes must be incorporated into the environment of nursing school. Faculty must provide the necessary tools through knowledge, activities, and a supportive atmosphere to help future nurses to successfully practice a healthy lifestyle (White et al., 2016).