The sexy nurse in a short skirt seems to be an icon in popular culture. I really have no idea where that image came from, though.
Over the past two years, I visited my mother in the hospital many times. I noticed that the majority of nurses, maybe 80% or so, were quite overweight; not just chunky, but obese.
Nurses are on their feet all day, lifting and moving people, walking from room to room and corridor to corridor, and likely burning far more calories than most of us in a typical workday. Why then, are so many grossly overweight?
I’ve always perceived that jobs which involve working with people who are somehow disenfranchised, marginalized, or incapacitated are often very attractive to people who have psychological problems involving interpersonal relationships with the opposite sex. This seems to be true across a broad spectrum of professions including medicine, law enforcement and corrections work, and special education, among others. It seems reasonable to me that this could be strongly correlated with a tendency to overeat, the overeating being either a compensatory mechanism or a result of simple apathy concerning one’s appearance.
Maybe it’s a stressful job, and they eat because they are stressed?
Maybe, because there is a shortage of nurses, they are overworked (contributing to stress) or are expected to work longer hours than people in other jobs? It might be hard to find time to shop for and cook healthy foods if you are working long hours, and it’s definitely hard to find time for exercise.
Shift work (which at least some nurses do) contributes to depression, which makes some people eat more.
If you’re not always working the same hours every day, that might make it harder to plan time for food shopping, cooking, and exercise, especially if you don’t know very far in advance what hours you will be working.
What a laughable set of generalized assertions. :rolleyes:
Nurses as an occupation are not any different than the general public in terms of their weight, unless someone has a study of the subject they’d like to pony up as evidence to the contrary. Personal anecdotes are not evidence to the contrary.
Having said that, one could postulate the following: hospital jobs for nurses are low on the totem pole of desirability, and are thus filled by nurses who are less likely to be able to get “better” jobs, which may correlate with appearance issues like obesity. But to support that hypothesis, one would have to have some evidence to support the underlying assumptions.
I’ve known several hospital nurses, and none of them were particularly overweight.
Well, how many people in the average Wal-Mart are overweight? I’m not gonna pretend to know any deep socio-cultural reason that nurses in particular may be overweight, but if you assume nurses to be a fairly average, representative slice of middle-aged women, I don’t know that they’re any more overweight than most.
Apparently about 66 percent of Texas adults are overweight or obese, so even if it was 80% of nurses, it wouldn’t be too far out of whack given the stress of the job.
Yeah, that’s right. Maybe obesity is no more common among nurses than it is in the general population, but it sticks out more because we don’t expect it. Maybe we unconsciously reason that “these are medical professionals—they shouldn’t be overweight.”
From the nurses I know (who have commented on the same thing the OP has), they believe it is a lot of what AnneNeville said above - stress, lack of time to eat, etc. Coupled with limited availability of healthy food at work (even hospital cafeteria food is generally bad for you) and vending machines for quick bites when they have time.
Environment & working conditions are key, though, I think. I work in a children’s hospital - a very good one, we’re not understaffed and the nurses love their jobs and have reasonable hours, etc, and we have an excellent caf that provides nutritional information, so it’s easier to be healthy. And the nurses around here aren’t any more or less overweight than the average population, to my eye.
The most stunningly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is a nurse in our local hospital. She was so far out my class It never even crossed my mind to make a move. I really had to fight telling her how beautiful she was. So I just lay there and happily allowed her to do very bad things to me.
One reason nurses probably aren’t in the best of shape is the incredibly long and strange hours they work- they probably don’t feel like exercising or being moderate in their time off. And it’s a high stress job, something that lends itself to comfort eating. This is probably why so many smoke as well in spite of many seeing the effects of smoking everyday.
If nurses are included in “health services personnel,” women in that category do indeed have a high obesity rate. I’m sure that category includes nurses aides, which is a really low-paid job, so the typical income-obesity link probably applies to some in that category.
I spent the last 30 years as a physician in hospital-based medicine, so I’ve seen a fair number of nurses. I actually have no idea if they are fatter than the general public, who on some days appear to be holding their own as hearty eaters.
Average age of nurses is pushing 50. For a given fat nurse, the reasons are probably similar to any fat person: poor eating and poor genes. I’m reflecting on the nurses in my ED as I type this…a few chunkers, but by and large fairly attractive and for the most part way under the average age. Lucky, I guess.
So, until someone produces a cite of a study, you can declare that nurses are no more or less overweight than the general public without a cite of your own? And then you go on to postulate reasons why they might be overweight?
Hospital jobs for nurses are low on the totem pole of desirability?
I also say that before anyone starts trying to explain why this might be true, there should be a cite showing that the premise is indeed true.
I’ve unfortunately had to deal with a lot of nurses over the last few years, and I haven’t found them to be more overweight on average than the general public.
Anecdote: The four nurses I personally know are all among the few ideal-weight adult women I know.
Contrary to what one might think, staying on your feet, walking indoors and occasionally lifting stuff eight hours a day is a lousy form of exercise, even if it’s very tiring. The same reason many guards (like my friends) are obese despite basically walking for money. “Light” physical jobs don’t work for weight management, yet they make one tired enough not to exercise in one’s free time. Long, busy days at odd hours also promote unhealthy eating.
I don’t go to hospitals very often, but the last time I was in one (for 10 days for a research study) about 80% of the female nurses were actually quite sexy. I only recall one or two who were a little chunky, though still not obese.