[Risk factors, life habits and personal beliefs of nurses and nurse-students about cardiovascular prevention].

Background: The contribution of conventional factors (hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus and smoke) to the risk of development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is known. Nurses have a strong role in helping patients improve their risk profile, and change their lifestyle. Behaviors and beliefs of the nurses (and physicians as well) are relevant to their "reliability" as models and educators.

Methods: A questionnaire was administered to a cohort of 98 students attending the last course-year in a school of nursing, and to a cohort of 84 nurses working in a cardiovascular department, to investigate their awareness of their own risk factors, their lifestyle, and their attitudes as to the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Results: Among heritable risk factors, hypertension ranked first in the awareness of both students and nurses, but the risk inherent in a family history of sudden death and early myocardial infarction was recognized only by 36% of subjects. Smokers were more frequent among students than among nurses (40 vs 25%); in both cohorts the misconception was common among smokers, that "light" cigarettes or smoking "no more than 5-10 cigarettes per day" is not harmful (15 and 30% of responders, respectively). The knowledge of upper normal limits for blood pressure, plasma cholesterol and triglycerides was often poor in both cohorts.

Conclusions: The knowledge and awareness of risk factors and harmful life habits should be improved by stressing their importance to the nurse students with a high priority during the school, and to the practicing nurses during postgraduate courses. This may be especially important for smoking. On the whole, however, our data suggest that the majority of the interviewed subjects, especially among the nurses, have a lifestyle that is a credible model for our patients.