Introduction. Nurses need to encourage patients to lead a healthy lifestyle, hence it is important that as nursing students they are already aware of the importance of physical activity. The purpose of the study was to investigate the physical activities of nursing students.
Aim. The aim of the study was to find out in what state physical activity of nursing students is and to find out what are their main reasons for lack of physical activity.
Material and methods. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study using a mixed methods design. The quantitative data was collected using the survey method with a convenience sample of 123 students and used descriptive and inferential statistics for the analysis. For the qualitative data we used a Grounded Theory Method with semi-structured interviews on purposive samples of four students.
Results and conclusions. In the quantitative part of this study we found a significantly higher proportion of outdoor physical activity in comparison to indoor physical activity (p < 0.001). The qualitative part contains the main categories of physical activity implementation, as well as three sub-categories: attitude to physical activity, barriers and incentives. Nursing students do not do physical activities regularly due to lack of time, obligations at the university, time of the year and finances.
