What are the predictors of self-assessed health in Lithuanian health professionals?

Abstract

Background and Objective: Scientific evidence indicates that patient safety and access to health care is linked to the well-being of health professionals. The self-assessed health status has been widely used as a health measure in different surveys. The aim of this study was to examine and determine the factors related to the self-assessed health status of health professionals. Material and Methods: The cross-sectional questionnaire surveys of nurses and physicians were carried out in randomly selected hospitals. A total of 1025 health professionals (739 nurses and 286 physicians) from 3 hospitals of different size located in 1 geographical region of Lithuania participated in the survey. The response rate among the nurses and the physicians was 89.2% and 52.5%, respectively. The overall response rate was 74.7%. The data on self-assessed health, demographic factors, anthropometric data, blood pressure, cholesterol level in blood, personal history of diseases, smoking, and alcohol consumption were gathered with the help of the questionnaire. Results: About two-thirds (64.1%) of the health professionals reported good or quite good health, and only 1.5% of the respondents reported quite poor or poor health. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the SAH status of health professionals was dependent on age (odds ratio [OR], 1.03; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-1.05 [Model 1]; OR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02-1.06 [Model 2]), diseases (OR, 7.32; 95%, 5.18-10.35), heart diseases (OR, 12.09; 95% CI, 2.9-50.35), hypertension (OR, 2.53; 95% CI, 1.55-4.14), cancer (OR, 6.19; 95% CI, 1.27-30.13), gastrointestinal (OR, 3.54; 95% CI, 1.59-7.86) and musculoskeletal diseases (OR, 3.21; 95% CI, 1.71-6.02), smoking (OR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.28-3.45 [Model 1]; OR, 2.00; 95% CI, 1.26-3.16 [Model 2]), and occupation (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.04-2.07 [Model 1]; OR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.11-2.16 [Model 2]). Conclusions: Diseases are the main predictors of self-assessed health in health professionals. Advancing age and smoking also contribute to poorer self-assessed health.