The Empowerment in Weight Control among Overweight Health care Worker at Sakon Nakhon Hospital

Abstract

This action research aimed to study the situation and overweight factors of health care worker in Sakon Nakhon Hospital, and to empower the health care workers with overweight and obesity to control their weight. Subjects were composed 15 overweight workers and 8 associates. The research instruments comprised of guidelines for in-dept. interview, non-participation observations, and guidelines for free dialogue. Data were analyzed by quantitative data analysis from the determination of frequency, percentage and qualitative data by content analysis.

The results of the planning, action and evaluation phase has been developed in the following:                1)  Developing a health check-up system, by overweight screening, giving advice, obesity curing and forwarding information with collaboration of the associates. 2) Empowerment of the overweight workers to control their weight through the process of 3 activities as follows: (1) ‘Open your mind’ (2) ‘Solve the problem’ (3) ‘Break through the wall’. It was found that each participant had their health care behaviors and adjusted their environment by starting from their workplace. The result also suggested that colleagues play a key role in effective weight management. The resulted was 13 overweight worker had improved their behavior, 86.67 percent, and 8 in 15 has reduced their BMI, accounting for 61.53 percent.