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Original article
Lifestyle medicine and physical activity knowledge of final year UK medical students
  1. Dina Radenkovic1,2,
  2. Ram Aswani1,
  3. Imtiaz Ahmad3,
  4. Jack Kreindler4,
  5. Rebecca Robinson4
  1. 1University College London Medical School, London, UK
  2. 2Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals NHS Trust, London, UK
  3. 3The South Lambeth Road Practice and Medical Department, Queens Park Rangers Football and Athletic Club, London, UK
  4. 4Centre for Health and Human Performance, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dina Radenkovic; dina.radenkovic{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Objectives It has previously been reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that final year UK medical students are lacking knowledge of the physical activity guidelines. This study assesses whether the knowledge and training of final year UK medical students has improved, whether knowledge correlates with lifestyle choices and whether there is a need for lifestyle medicine training, which includes physical activity guidance, to be offered to this cohort.

Methods A questionnaire consisting of nine key questions was sent to 1356 final year medical students from seven different UK medical schools.

Results Completed questionnaires (n=158) were analysed and revealed that 52% were unaware of the current exercise guidelines in the UK. 80% stated they had not received training in lifestyle medicine over the last 2 years while 48.1% were unacquainted with motivational interviewing. 76% wanted more lifestyle medicine teaching to be incorporated into the medical school curriculum.

Conclusions These findings suggest that final year UK medical students still lack knowledge of the physical activity guidelines. In addition, there is a demand among this cohort for increased lifestyle medicine training which may in turn be an effective way of improving physical activity knowledge.

  • physical activity promotion in primary care
  • exercise
  • education

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2019-000518

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    Footnotes

    • DR and RA contributed equally.

    • Contributors DR and RA designed the study and wrote the manuscript. RR, JK and IA provided expert review of the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement statement There was no direct patient and public involvement in this work.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.