A Current Assessment of Physical Activity Training within Medical School

Abstract

Health care professionals serve as influential sources of information and guidance for their patients. Medical education presents an opportune time to train future physicians in providing PA counseling. PURPOSE: To assess current U.S. medical school curricula for the inclusion and level of PA content. METHODS: We reviewed the websites for schools that provided online curricula and attempted to interview 137 allopathic and 34 osteopathic medical education programs in the U.S. RESULTS: Of the 156 programs that had a curriculum listed on their website, only 11 mentioned PA. Of the 74 schools that completed interviews, 58 schools reported including training in PA (78.4%) in their medical curriculum. Of these schools, 35 (61.4%) included instruction on the national PA guidelines, and 31 (56.4%) felt that they taught a sufficient level of PA for their students to successfully counsel their patients in the future. The greatest level of PA training reported, including optional and parallel training, was during the first (mean = 5.41 hrs) and third years (mean = 5.93 hrs) of the medical education program. When the four years of the medical education programs were combined, schools reported requiring an average total of 8.11 hrs of PA training. CONCLUSION: Our results provide a current snapshot of the level of PA content provided in U.S. medical schools. Though many schools report providing some level of PA content, additional research is needed to determine the specific content of PA training. It is vital that we explore new ways of integrating higher quality PA education training into the medical system.