Body composition is a key component of the individual health and physical fitness. It is an indicator of nutritional status that reflects the degree of risk for developing chronic non-communicable diseases (CND). The aim of the master's thesis was to assess the body composition and nutritional status of hospital workers. The study included body composition measurements (height, weight, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference, fat mass (FM) and fat-free mass (FFM)) of 506 employees of the General Hospital Novo mesto (SBNM) and were obtained during the workshops on health promotion on workplace, which took place between November 2015 and December 2019. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) was used to measure FM and FFM. The nutritional status of employees, assessed by the body mass index (BMI), was compared with a representative sample of the general population in Slovenia. The general population data came from the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) as part of the previous cross-sectional survey SI.Menu 2017/18. We found that the proportion of overweight and obese SBNM employees (51.3%, N=259) did not exceed the proportion of overweight and obese in the Slovenian general population (59.8%). At the same time, we found that SBNM employees on average gain weight faster than the general Slovenian population when comparing the average body mass of the two samples at a certain age. Using the criteria of WC and waist-to-hip ratio, we found a relatively high proportion of visceral obesity among SBNM employees (51.4%, N=253; 41.6%, N=205). Even among those who were normal weight according to BMI value (44,8%, N=227). We additionally selected 60 nursing staff from the sample and investigated differences in body composition according to level of education (secondary education and Bachelor’s Degree) and length of working experience. When examining the body composition parameters of the sample of nursing staff, we did not observe statistical differences according to education (p=0,319) and length of service (p=0,100) due to the small sample.
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