How mindful of their own health are healthcare professionals? perception and practice of personnel in a tertiary hospital in Nigeria

To assess health professionals' perception and determinants of their health and practice of preventive self-care. An analytic cross-sectional design was employed, and 232 professionals were selected by stratified sampling from all health professional departments of Delta State University Teaching Hospital. Healthcare professionals who had worked in the hospital for at least six months were included in the sampling frame. Pregnant women and supernumerary professionals were excluded. A self-administered questionnaire was used, and data analysed using SPSS. The main outcome measures were the level of perception of self-health and level of practice of preventive selfcare. More than four-fifths of doctors and 64.8% of nurses had good perception of their health, with significant association between perception and service area (X = 11.828, p =0.008). Screening practice was lowest amongst doctors except for HIV/HBV screening. Whereas 63.4% of all participants adjudged their BMI to be normal, only 36.2% actually had normal BMI, the difference being significant (