Health Behaviors and Health Perception among medical and non-medical students

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The interest of medicine was moved from disease treatment to disease prevention and health promotion. Especially, there has been marked increased interest in health promotion recently. Perception and health behaviors held or acquired during medical training can influence the acceptance and prevention strategies. This exploratory study surveyed medical and non-medical student to assess both preventive health behaviors and perception, to find relations of personal behaviors and corresponding perception. METHODS: This survey were conducted 140 medical students and 131 non-medical students in one big city. Data were obtained by self-reported questionnaire. Weschler survey was adapted to assess perception toward preventive behavior, and Fantastic lifestyle was adapt,ed to assess health behavior. RESULTS: Among the questionnaire of perception of preventive behavior, quitting cigarette smoking ranked highest frequency as very important in medical student. In non-medical student, use seat-belt is ranked highest frequency. Mean score of FANTASTIC lifestyle is 29.98 in medical student, 28.86 in non-medical. The result show significant relationship between st,udent-reported behavior and corresponding perception in 6 qestionnaire that is eat breakfast, moderate or no alcohol use, eliminate smoking, use seat belt, limit coffee, get seven hours sleep. CONCLUSIONS: In comparing medical and non-medical students, health perception and health behavior were no significant difference. Overall, the result indicated that the preponderance of respondents that is engaging in health behaviors are high in health perception.