Comparison the Knowledge of Medical Students on Practical Aspects of Exercise in Prevention and Treatment of Digestive diseases with and without a course in the field of sport medicine

Physical activity is a fundamental health issue, How to educate it to patients and people in the community requires a set of knowledge and information about the sport, which should be achieved by physicians during college education. This study aims to compare the knowledge of Medical students with and without a training course about medical sport.

180 medical interns from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, both males (56%) and females (44%) students participated in this study. Sport and physical activity questionnaire (Mojab, 2008) was used. All the items were analyzed using SPSS version 22.

Independent Sample T-test was applied to find whether there are similarities or differences between the interns with and without a course of sports medicine, and P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Based on the obtained results the mean age was 25.75±1.38 years. The overall performance of the participants with a course in sports medicine (mean=9.75±3.12) was better than those without a course in sports medicine (mean=9.57±2.20). Although half of the participants passed a 3-hour course in sports medicine, no significant difference was found between the students’ knowledge without a course and those who passed a course in sports medicine (P=0.456).

Findings show that these students lacked sufficient knowledge about the sport and were unable to prescribe a suitable sporting version for patients. So, it is suggested that medical education authorities prepare this field by providing at least one multi-day training workshop during the internship periud.