title: Poor dietary behaviors among hospital nurses in Seoul, South Korea.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nurses reportedly practice unhealthy behaviors due to unfavorable work schedules. Korean nurses are particularly vulnerable to dietary and health behaviors due to high patient-to-nurse ratios; however, there are few studies on Korean hospital nurses' health behaviors.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the dietary and health behaviors of Korean hospital nurses according to their work schedule type.
  
  
  METHODS
  This was a cross-sectional descriptive study using survey data from 340 hospital nurses. Nurses' dietary and health behaviors were evaluated across different work schedules and compared to the general Korean female population.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nurses with rotating night shift schedules were more often underweight than nurses without night shifts and had more unhealthy dietary behaviors, such as skipping breakfast and eating late night snacks. Nonetheless, Korean nurses practiced healthy behaviors, such as engaging actively in physical activity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Hospitals should create policies to provide healthy schedules for nurses to mitigate the negative effects of rotating and night shifts. However, these management-led measures will be effective only if individual nurses realize and take responsibility for their health behaviors and choices.
authors.affiliation: Chung-Ang University Red Cross College of Nursing, Seoul, South Korea.
authors.forename: Kihye
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Nursing Science, Seoul National University College of Nursing, Seoul, South Korea. Electronic address: smi@snu.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Smi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Choi-Kwon
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea.
authors.forename: Kyeong Sug
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004032:Diet; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital; D056910:Republic of Korea; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Dietary behavior; Health behavior; Nurse; South Korea; Work schedule