Lifestyle habits of medical and non-medical teachers: A comparative cross-sectional study.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Teachers, both medical and non-medical, are important professionals of the community. Their lifestyle habits, like diet, exercise, and stress, are subtle to their profession. This study focused on finding the similarities and differences in lifestyle habits of medical and non-medical teachers.

METHOD: This cross-sectional study was conducted in different cities of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province from April 2024 to January 2025. By convenient sampling, 208 medical and non-medical teachers filled an electronic questionnaire containing consent and confidentiality statements, questions related to the demographics of participants and lifestyle habits. Data was analysed using SPSS v22. The Independent t-test and Chi-square test was used to compare lifestyle habits between the groups. A p-value less than 0.05 was considered significant.

RESULTS: A Total of 208 medical and non-medical teachers with a mean age of 33.36 ±10.165 years, 131(63.0%) males and 77(37.0%) females participated in the study. Overall, 178(85/6%) of the respondents had healthy lifestyle habits with a mean value of 51.44±8.6301. Chi-square test across lifestyle domains like exercise, diet, stress and demographic variables resulted in an insignificant p-value, i.e., <0.05. Also, No significant difference was found between lifestyle domains, and overall score versus medical and non-medical teachers (p-value>0.05, respectively).

CONCLUSION: The study confirmed that the teachers, as a whole, exhibit healthy lifestyle habits of exercise, stress, and diet irrespective of their profession across different academic institutions of Punjab and KPK. This indicates that the occupational context and socioeconomic factors seem more powerful determinants of lifestyle than specialized health knowledge.