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

Background: 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. methods: 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. results: 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). conclusion: 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.