EFFECTIVENESS OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH INTERVENTION PROGRAMME ON WORK PLACE ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND STRESS MANAGEMENT AMONG NURSES IN SOUTH-WEST NIGERIA

The nurse’s role has long been regarded as stress filled based on the physical labour human suffering, work hours, staffing and interpersonal relationships that are central to the work nurses do. Occupational stress is thus, a recognized problem among health care workers in general. Nursing has therefore been identified as an occupation that has high level of risks and stress in the work place environment. Therefore the study investigated the effects of occupational health intervention programme on environmental risks and stress management of staff nurses in South-west Nigeria. A pretest, posttest, control group, quasi-experimental research design was adopted. Two hundred and twenty five (225) respondents were selected for the study. One hundred and twelve (112) respondents were used as experimental group while one hundred and thirteen (113) respondents were used as control group. Fish bowl method was used for grouping the participants into experimental and control groups respectively. A self-developed questionnaire tagged ‘Occupational Health Intervention Programme, Environmental Risks and Stress Management Questionnaire OHIPERSMQ’ with a reliability coefficient of 0.88 was used. The experimentation lasted 8 weeks. Analysis was done using ANCOVA and Multiple Classification Analysis. Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level. Findings revealed that occupational health intervention programme has significant effect on risk management knowledge of staff nurses. The experimental group had mean = 4.44, better than the control group that had mean = 2.92. Also, occupational health intervention programme had significant effect on stress management knowledge of nurses with experimental group mean = 7.78, better than the control group mean = 2.36. Based on these findings, it was recommended that medical social workers should ensure that nurses participate in educational training in skills associated with risk reduction, stress reduction and safety promotion so as to guarantee their wellbeing and good job performance.

Impact of a combined diet and progressive exercise intervention for overweight and obese children: the B.E. H.I.P. study

The Biochemical Evaluation of a Health Intervention Programme (B.E. H.I.P.) investigated the impact of progressive exercise intensity in overweight and obese children. A 5-month prospective randomized crossover design (XA, immediate intervention; OB, control group; XB, delayed intervention, OA, postintervention follow-up) with a 10-week health intervention programme was employed. The intervention utilized a progressive increase in high-intensity exercise (≥75% maximum heart rate) and included 3 nutrition and 2 parent education sessions. Primary analysis was completed with (i) XA versus OB and (ii) all intervention participants (collapsed XA and XB = XAXB). Prepubertal overweight and obese male and female children (n = 27) between 5 and 10 years of age were randomly allocated to XA (n = 16; 11 females; waist circumference = 80.0 ± 10.6 cm) or OB (n = 11; 3 females; waist circumference = 76.6 ± 7.5 cm). The primary variables were heart rate and percent fat mass. All variables, including body composition, habitual activity, and serum lipids, were repeatedly measured for up to a maximum of 7 time points. Energy expenditure was quantitatively measured throughout each exercise class (n = 20). A significantly longer time in the exercise sessions was spent in high-intensity (35.1%–60.0%) versus low- to moderate-intensity (64.9%–40.0%) exercise as the intervention progressed from the first to the last attended exercise class (Fisher exact test, p < 0.0001). The percent fat mass decreased in all intervention participants (–2.2%, p < 0.0001). XA had a greater slope decrease than OB for percent fat mass (p = 0.00051) and triglycerides (p = 0.0467). In conclusion, high-intensity exercise, within a comprehensive health programme that includes nutrition education, improved the lipid and physiological health profiles of obese children.