Assessing Stages of dietary change and nutrition attitudes in nursing and midwifery students in Fatemeh Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in 2006, Shiraz

Nutrition plays an important role in maintaining health and preventing diseases. Students’ attitude toward foods can also have an important role in their nutritional behaviors. The study aimed at exploring the stages of dietary change with regard to socio-demographic variables (age, sex, marital status, year/field of education and BMI) and the nutrition attitudes of nursing and midwifery students of Fatemeh faculty of nursing and midwifery in Shiraz. This descriptive study was conducted on 300 freshmen to senior students of nursing and midwifery who were studying varyingly in first year of education to four. Trained interviewers interviewed the subjects based on the transtheoretical Prochaska model, by which the subjects are classified in six stages of changes in nutritional behaviors. Nutrition attitudes were assessed by three questions. All statistics were computed by the SPSS software data. It was found that 29.3% of the students were in the precontemplation stage and 50.3% of the students are in the dynamic stage (including contemplation, decision and action). 11 and 9/3 percent of students were in the maintenance and relapse stages, respectively. Most of the students with average age of 21.5 were in the dynamic stage. Most men (48.8%) were in the precontemplation stage, and most women (53.6%) were in the dynamic stage. Most single and married subjects were in the dynamic stage (48.8%, 58.1% respectively). Most freshmen to senior students (47.8%, 55.9%, 49.4%, 47.8% respectively) were in dynamic stage. Most of the subjects in the underweight, normal weight and overweight categories were in dynamic stage (53.9%, 49.6%, and 51.8% respectively). Regarding eating attitude, the results demonstrated that most of the nursing (51%) and midwifery students (59%) feel a need to change their diet. Moreover, they think about the dietary aspects of their food (78.4%, 82% respectively). In addition, they expressed their agreement to the item of seeking information regarding healthy diet (83.3%, 85.9% respectively). The status of nursing and midwifery students considering stages of dietary change and their nutrition attitudes were positively appropriate. To consider nutrition principles for teaching to students, who are educating to manage patients’ issues regarding their nutrition, seems to be an important factor in achieving such results. The study recommends duplicating the study on other nursing and midwifery students as well as in other university programmes.