VALUE PRIORITIES OF MEDICAL WORKERS IN RELATION TO HEALTH
Authors:   Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia, Armashevskaya Olga , Sokolovskaya Tatyana ,   Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia, Bakhadova Elena ,   Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia
Published: January 2024

Significance. Health is an important indicator of human functioning, determining the relationship and interaction of the biological, physiological, psychological, social and spiritual components of individual life. Medical workers, in accordance with their scope of work, are directly related to the health of the population, its preservation and are subject to the same risk factors. There are enough publications devoted to the study of health of medical workers, however, justification based on the study of attitudes to the value of health, a systematic approach to disease prevention in this professional group has not been found in open sources. The purpose of the study was to analyze priorities of medical workers regarding the value of health to substantiate practical recommendations to organize preventive measures to preserve health of medical workers. Material and methods. The study was conducted in three districts of the Russian Federation among 755 professionals with higher and secondary medical education, as well as among students of medical universities and colleges to determine the category of "health" in the hierarchy of life values. The respondents were asked to evaluate significance of the main components of an individual's life in points from 1 (minimum) to 7 (maximum) with the option of only a non-repeating score, grouped in five blocks of the questionnaire "Motivations and values of health in family", developed by the Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. Data analysis was carried out using MS Excel-2016 and STATISTICA 13 licensed programs, employing descriptive statistics methods (M ± SD, Me, Mo) and the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test to identify differences between professional and student groups at Uemp ≤ Ucr, with the level of statistical significance p≤0.05. Results. The analysis showed that despite the existing significant differences across groups, both medical professionals and medical students have an attitude to their health as the main individual and family value. At the same time, there are also respondents who self-medicate (37.5%), don’t seek care prior the onset of the critical phase (26.7%) and are fatalistic about health problems (12.5%). In addition, it is worth noting that 41.4% of the working medical specialists rank moral compass the last. Conclusion. The study showed that in the hierarchy of life values of both working and future medical workers, health, a healthy lifestyle and compliance with preventive measures remain among the main values, however the lack of time to implement these values was noted while a systematic approach to organizing preventive measures to preserve health of medical workers is missing. Scope of application: the proposed approaches to organizing preventive measures to preserve health of medical workers can be used to formulate corporate measures in healthcare.