Prevalence of Hypercholesterolemia among Nurses in Hospitals of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

Abstract

The main objective is to study the prevalence of hypercholesterolemia among nurses working on shift and ascertain its association with socio economic parameters. The study was a cross sectional comparative study using randomized sampling technique. The sample population consisted of registered nurses working in randomly selected government and private hospitals in rural and urban areas of Thiruvananthapuram city. A Uniform sample size of 250 each were drawn from government and private hospitals of Thiruvananthapuram district to form a population size (N=500). Again a sub sample size of 25 each were drawn from government and private hospitals in rural and urban areas of Thiruvananthapuram (N=100) for the in depth studies. Only female nurses were included in the study who had minimum of five year experience and those who belonged to the age group between 25-45yrs. All the respondents selected for the study were doing their work on shift base from the day of joining their duty, which is the other condition for the study. A pretested schedule was used to elicit information using interview method. The information regarding demographic characteristics, shift details, medication, morbidity details and physical activities were collected. To estimate the level of total cholesterol, blood samples were collected from the subsample of 100 subjects from each group. Chi square tests were carried out for analysing the quantitative and categorized variables. Out of fifty respondents from private hospitals, the prevalence of border line hypercholesterolemia was thirty two percent and the prevalence of high risk hypercholesterolemia was ten percent. Results from respondents of government hospital also gave the same. Total cholesterol assessed in the subject from the two sectors was not significantly associated with age (χ²=8.738; χ²=6.051), experience (χ²=1.002; χ²=1.181) and area of residence (χ²=8.793; χ²= 2.062). The blood sample analysis revealed that a significant number of respondents were considered to be border line risk and high risk of hypercholesterolemia which suggests that irregular shift hours can be associated with increased risk of hypercholesterolemia leads to further fatal condition. However level of total cholesterol was not significantly influenced by factors like age, work experience and area of residence.