New UMass Study Identifies Factors that Predict Physical Activity for Nursing Students

New research from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in collaboration with the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, is helping to identify barriers to physical activity in nurses. Published in PLOS ONE, the study reports that the key factors influencing exercise include intrinsic motivation, certain types of social support, certain demographic identifiers and the use of health-tracking technology.

Nursing is a notoriously exhausting career, marked by irregular and long shifts and high physical demands. At the same time, prior studies show that about half of nurses fail to meet physical activity recommendations.

Joohyun Chung, associate professor in the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing and an author on the new paper, highlights how failing to meet physical activity recommendations negatively impacts nurses' overall well-being. "This is connected to self-care," she says. "When you work, it's different [physical activity] than when you go swimming or skiing." Considering that there are 4.2 million nurses in the U.S. and this field has high rates of burnout, improving nurses' well-being is an important priority.

"And, indirectly, we want to improve the health care that they deliver to their patients," says Muge Capan, assistant professor of industrial engineering at UMass Amherst and lead study author. "[Health] trickles down through the nurses to patient: If the nurse's health is compromised, we know it impacts burnout, it impacts retention, it impacts diagnostic errors. If they are not at their healthiest, highest potential, then it impacts the care they give to their patients."

It is very challenging for nurses to begin new healthy habits after they enter the workforce. So the researchers saw an opportunity to preserve or encourage new healthy physical activity habits in nursing students. "What we're hoping is that they can take care of themselves first before they take care of others," says Chung.

"This population is the future," Capan adds. "If we understand the barriers to physical activity now in this population and target them with specific tailored solutions, then in the future, we can predict who is going to be at higher risk of continuing these [sedentary] behaviors. Maybe by preventing [inactivity], we are making an impact as they transition into the actual workforce."

With this in mind, the research used validated questionnaires to identify the subsets of nursing students at greatest risk for physical inactivity and define the barriers they're experiencing.