A study on the prevalence of orthorexia nervosa among healthcare workers

Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of orthorexia nervosa in health personnel working in Gercüş State Hospital and to examine the affecting factors. Material and Method: The study is descriptive and cross-sectional in nature. It was conducted between March and June of 2021. The study's population consisted of all healthcare workers (n=112) employed at Gercüş State Hospital. The face-to-face survey was applied with the ORTO-11 scale form and the personal information form consisting of sociodemographic characteristics and anthropometric measurements. The TANITA MC780-MA body analyzer was used to take anthropometric measurements of the participants. A voluntary consent formswere obtained from the participants, as well as approval from the University of Dicle Medical Faculty Non-Interventional Clinical Research Ethics Committee and the required permissions from Gercüş State Hospital's Head Physician. The data obtained within the scope of the study was evaluated with the software 'SPSS 22.0 for Windows'. The Chi-square test and Spearman correlation analysis were used in the data analysis.The significance value was accepted as p<0.05. Results: 48.2% of the participants are women, 55.4% are single, 34.8% are 30 years old and older. 87.5% of them are university graduates, 14.3% are doctors, 37.5% are nurses, 13.4% are midwives and 34.8% are other healthcare workers. The mean BMI is 24.1±3.5 and 52.7% of them are in the high body fat group. Orthorexic tendencies is seen in 33.0% of the healthcare workers who participated in the study. No statistically significant difference was found between age, gender, marital status, educational status, BMI, and orthorexia nervosa. Conclusion: It was determined that orthorexic tendency was common in the individuals included in the study and orthorexia nervosa tendency was observed in one out of every three individuals. Sociodemographic variables examined for orthorexic tendency were independent of body fat ratio and BMI. Keywords: Orthorexia nervosa, healthcare workers, healthy diet, eating disorders, public health.