Aims: To investigate physical activity levels of nursing and medicine students, examine predictors of physical activity level and examine the most influential benefits and barriers to exercise.
Background: Healthcare professionals have low levels of physical activity, which increases their health risk and may influence their health promotion practices with patients.
Design: We surveyed 361 nursing (n = 193) and medicine (n = 168) students studying at a UK medical school.
Methods: Questionnaire survey, active over 12 months in 2014-2015. Measures included physical activity level, benefits and barriers to exercise, social support, perceived stress and self-efficacy for exercise.
Results: Many nursing and medicine students did not achieve recommended levels of physical activity (nursing 48%; medicine 38%). Perceived benefits of exercise were health related, with medicine students identifying additional benefits for stress relief. Most notable barriers to exercise were as follows: lack of time, facilities having inconvenient schedules and exercise not fitting around study or placement schedules. Nursing students were less active than medicine students; they perceived fewer benefits and more barriers to exercise and reported lower social support for exercise. Physical activity of nursing and medicine students was best predicted by self-efficacy and social support, explaining 35% of the variance.
Conclusion: Physical activity should be promoted in nursing and medicine students. Interventions should aim to build self-efficacy for exercise and increase social support. Interventions should be developed that are targeted specifically to shift-working frontline care staff, to reduce schedule-related barriers to exercise and to increase accessibility to workplace health and well-being initiatives.
Keywords: exercise; healthcare students; nursing; physical activity; self-efficacy; social support.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.