Introduction: Nurses are important potential promoters of healthy lifestyle messages however are not necessarily the healthiest of workforces. Evidence suggests that overweight/obesity levels among nurses may be similar to those in the general population, around 60% in New Zealand. A multi-methods study was carried out in 2014 to explore this in more depth. 

Aim: Explore the attitudes of nurses towards being role models for healthy eating, being physically active, and maintaining a healthy weight. Consider how nurses applied contemporary best practice guidelines/recommendations to themselves, and explore barriers and enablers to living a healthy lifestyle.

Methods: Interviews of a purposively selected sample of 9 nurses with thematic analysis carried out.  Followed up by an anonymous online survey distributed to a non-random sample of nurses through contact lists, Facebook pages for professional nursing bodies and snowball methods. Analysis of encrypted responses was carried out using descriptive statistics. 

Findings:  The sample (135), did not reflect member statistics for NZ Nursing Council however did cover a range of ages, backgrounds, workplaces, disciplines, years worked and ethnicity (not Pacific). Most nurses felt that role modelling health behaviours was important (89%), 50% of nurses described their weight as being higher than it should be. Health behaviours appeared slightly better in the study nurses than in the general population. While the majority of the sample claimed to maintain most of the desired healthy lifestyle habits, more than one nurse in four found it hard or really hard to eat well, one in three found physical activity recommendations hard or really hard, and obtaining or maintaining a healthy weight was a struggle for two out of five individuals.  Important barriers to living a healthy lifestyle included shift-work, tiredness and juggling other obligations.

Conclusion: It is heartening that being a 'good' role model is important to the nurses in the study, however many struggled to apply recommended health promotion and personal health behaviours themselves. A number of factors potentially impact this. Being honest and 'sharing the journey' was considered more important than being a 'perfect' role model. Further exploration with a wider sample would be beneficial.