Integrating health promoting lifestyle into occupational health protection: influence of a worksite programme

This study aimed to explore workers' health-promoting lifestyle and the cognitive/perceptual factors that influence it, prepare and implement a worksite health promotion program and assess the influence of the program on these factors and the extent to which workers change their health-promoting lifestyle after program implementation. The study included 138 workers in Proctor and Gambel Company in 6th of October City. A structured self administered questionnaire was prepared to collect data pertaining to the study. A questionnaire was administered to the participants to collect the pre-program data. Three months after finishing implementation of the program, the health value survey, health conception survey, health-promoting lifestyle profile and the dietary and smoking habits survey were re-administered to collect the post-program data. The study confirmed that integrating multiple risk factor intervention targeting health- promoting lifestyle into occupational health protection led to a significant health behavior change among the workers. Occupational health professionals, particularly nurses, must plan and implement health-promotion interventions within workplaces to influence lifestyle change conductive to workers' wellness and not merely disease prevention. Finally, it was recommended that occupational health nurses should approach the high management levels to gain their support for improving work environment to reduce job stressors and barriers to health-promoting lifestyle

Empowering school health services: inservice training for school health supervisors dressing management and leadership skills and newly issuing health problems

School health [SH] services deal with a large sector of the population which mounted to about 14.2 million pupils [Census, 1997]. School health supervisors [SHS] are front-line managers who supervise and direct the work of school nurses and health visitors. They report directly to the high level managers of school health in the different Health Insurance Organization sectors and branches. Today's rapidly changing health care delivery systems require that those frohene managers have more sophisticated knowledge and skills to support their roles. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an in-service training program directed to school health supervisors in improving their cognitive and practical management skills, influencing leadership style and increasing awareness of new issuing school health problem. A pre-post tests were used to assess the effect of training program on 154 school health supervisors. The results of this study revealed that the in-service program succeeded to enrich school health supervisors knowledge in relation to leadership and management process. It introduced them to the quality management concept and the practical skills utilized in the process of quality improvement as well, updated their knowledge concerning some of the newly issuing school health problem

Relationship between perceived self-efficacy, functional ability and depressive symptoms in the elderly

This study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and functional ability and their influence on depressive symptoms in elderly persons. The sample was formed of 150 elderly persons aged above 60 years who were community dwellers and ambulatory. Data were collected through direct interview using four tools; personal data inventory, self-efficacy expectation scale, functional ability scale and geriatric depression scale. The study provided evidence on the strong positive relationship between perceived self-efficacy and functional ability. Also, it indicated that both factors had negative relationship with the level of depressive symptoms. In addition, the study showed that among the personal characteristics, financial independence and having a job had a positive influence on reducing depressive symptoms