Healthcare Workers Don't Always Practice What They Preach

For mammograms, he says, "many women would say mammograms are uncomfortable, and healthcare workers may be more in tune to recognizing than others.

But I think it might relate to the fact that actually, there's a lot of controversy these days over mammograms and in particular, how much of a benefit they have, and concerns about overdiagnosis of cancers that weren't going to ever cause a problem anyway.

So maybe they are saying, 'You know, I don't really want to find out something that isn't really that important anyway."

And on alcohol consumption within the last 30 days, there is debate and some evidence that moderate drinking is not only okay, but beneficial, Mukamal says.

Healthcare workers did report some healthier behaviors than their non-healthcare worker counterparts.  For example, they said they were 19% less likely to say they had not exercised in the past 30 days, and 17% less likely to say they had driven a vehicle after drinking alcohol in the last 30 days. And they were 22% less likely than non-healthcare workers to report "heavy" drinking in the past 30 days.