Quality of life and eating attitudes of health care students

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess the quality of life and eating attitudes of health care students of the undergraduate programs of a public university. METHOD: Observational, cross-sectional, and quantitative study performed in a federal university. Three questionnaires were used for data collection: a socio-demographic and academic, the WHOQOL-BREF and the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26). RESULT: 399 students participated in this study, most women, average age of 22 years, average scores of EAT-26 of 15.12 and quality-of-life averages above 60 points in all domains. The students of the undergraduate program in Nutrition presented more inappropriate eating attitudes than other health care students; as the age evolves, vulnerability to inadequate eating attitudes increases; and the family income influenced negatively the quality of life in Physical and Social domains. CONCLUSIONS: Inadequate eating attitude diminishes the quality of life of health care students in all domains of the WHOOQOL-BREF.