Assessment of knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of undergraduate medical students about sedentary lifestyle and lifestyle modifications – A facility based descriptive study

Abstract

Abstract: INTRODUCTION: A sedentary lifestyle has become very common in the medical student leading to obesity. MBBS training period of 5½ years is extensive and very challenging. To cope with time and course curriculum, medical students adapt to multiple unhealthy lifestyle arrays. Many scientific articles have reported that medical students develop numerous health diseases over due to their unbalanced schedules and routines. With limited preexisting data on lifestyle patterns of medical students, this study was planned to assess the knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of 1st year undergraduate medical students about sedentary lifestyle and lifestyle modifications at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, KAHER, Belagavi, Karnataka state, India. METHODOLOGY: This is a facility-based descriptive study done among 200 first-year medical undergraduate students in the Department of Physiology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research, Belagavi. A predesigned structured questionnaire was circulated by Google Forms and responses were coded and entered into a Microsoft Excel sheet. The data analysis was done using percentages (%). Ethical clearance was obtained from the institutional ethical committee for human’s subject’s research of the medical college. RESULTS: Among 200 medical students, 192 (96%) of them responded to the questionnaire. About 174 (87%) of the students were practicing physical activity, about 52 (26%) of them did it five times per week, 70 (35%) did three times a week, and 50 (25%) did only once a week, whereas 26 (13%) of the students did not perform physical activity at all. During free time, the students had varied behavior about 59 (29.6%) of students spent time in one or another form of physical activity, 44 (21.8%) enjoyed music, 45 (22.3%) were active in social networking, 23 (11.4%) liked reading and creativity, and 29 (14.5%) of them did not respond to this question. About 110 (54.7%) strongly agreed to include training modules on the prevention of lifestyle disorders in undergraduate medical curriculum. CONCLUSION: More than half of the students told that 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous activity should be done regularly. Nearly two-thirds of them knew about the prevalence of obesity and listed the diseases caused by lifestyle diseases. Majority of the students practiced physical activity and knew about lifestyle diseases and were able to identify sedentary behavior. Nearly half of them told that a training module on the prevention of lifestyle diseases is required. There is an utmost important need to include a component of physical fitness in the undergraduate medical curriculum. This will help medical students to decrease stress and improve mental health.