Attributes, Causes, and Outcomes of Health-Related Procrastination in Nurses: A Qualitative Content Analysis

In the field of health, procrastination is a relatively new but important issue. Most studies on procrastination deal with academic procrastination while no study, to the best of our knowledge, is available regarding the issue of health-related procrastination. Therefore, the present study was conducted to discover the attributes, causes, and outcomes of the health-related procrastination in nurses.

This conventional, qualitative, content analysis was conducted on 13 nurses (including 5 males and 8 females with a mean age of 34.76 years) from academic hospitals affiliated with Iran University and Gonabad University of Medical Sciences using a purposive sampling technique. The data were collected from October 2016 to December 2017 through face-to-face semi-structured interviews and field notes.

The attributes of procrastination included a gap between intention and action, illogical delays, and delays in doing health tasks. The factors included present-biased and comfort over hardship preferences, risk taking, avoidance behaviors, selfsatisfaction, inner tendencies, the nursing job, the nature of the problem, and beliefs. The outcomes included psychological, physical, and social problems.

The results of this study provided an in-depth understanding of the concept of health-related procrastination. Thus, the findings can help design health education interventions and promote nurses’ health.