Introduction: Leisure practices are complex activities involving several dimensions of human life such as social, cultural, and health. Using them to increase well-being and in situations of chronic diseases help in the adaptation to the disease.
Objective: This study analyzed factors associated with leisure practice in individuals on hemodialysis.
Methods: Data were collected by interview during hemodialysis sessions in a cross-sectional, census, with 1024 individuals. Socioeconomic factors, lifestyle, clinical and treatment characteristics were associated with leisure practices and their magnitudes were evaluated by binary logistic regression.
Results: We found that being 40 years of age or younger increased the odds of engaging in more leisure activities by 5.26 times (95% CI = 3.86-10.15), never having smoked increased the odds of engaging in more leisure activities by 2.12 (95% CI = 1.04-4.30). However, those who had eight years or less of education were 71.1% less likely to practice more leisure (OR = 0.289, 95%CI = 0.17-0.49).
Conclusion: The factors associated with higher leisure practices of hemodialysis users are younger age, higher education, and absence of smoking, demonstrating the need to implement public policies to reduce health inequalities and increase leisure practices.