Describing the Health Behavior of Treichville University Hospital’s Physicians (Abidjan-Côte D’Ivoire)

Background: Doctors should portray examples of health behavior for the population. Doctors are often confronted with financial and social problems that make it sometimes difficult to work in the public and private sectors. This pressure of the workload has repercussions on their health, behavior and family. The aim of our study was to describe physician health behavior. Materials and methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study in sight and took part to the University Hospital of Treichville. Our sample consisted of 120 physicians selected randomly from different services. Results: The physicians were mainly male (79%) and had an average age of 46 years. 53% of them were overweight. They had some activities outside of their services (83%) principally in private clinics (95%). 81. 7% of them were affirming not to spend enough time with their families. Among the surveyed physicians, 67. 5% did not practice sports, 38.9% did not use any means of protection against mosquito bites in their homes. 48. 3% brush their teeth, but only in the morning, 41.7% had no vaccine record, 82.5% did not do any annual medical check-up, (25%) did not do their HIV screening test. Most of them adopted risky sexual behavior, meaning that they had multiple sexual partners (56.4%) and had sex with casual partners (53. 8%). More than half of the physicians (55%) used to drink alcohol; among them, only 12.1% was planning to stop drinking. In the case of illness, 77. 5% would practice self-medication while 37.8% would often resort to traditional medicines. In addition, 46.7% of the physicians were declared to be bad in term of observing dosage and treatment duration. Conclusion: These results underline the need to develop strategies for health promotion with regard to the physicians. Key word: health behavior, physician, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.