ASSESSMENT OF LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND ASSSOCIATED FACTORS WITH PRACTICE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF SPHMMC, ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

ABSTRACT Physical inactivity is becoming a global epidemic and lead to many diseases. This cross -sectional study tried to investigate knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) regarding Physical activity(PA) among Medical students of SPHMMC who has enormous contact with the patients coming to the Hospital. Exercise includes a wide range of activities like running, jumping, swimming, dancing, push up, lifting weight, gardening, car washing or walking around with a pet in the neighborhood and exercise can also be done at home. But some people have a wrong idea that exercise can only be done in gymnasium, recreational park, or a stadium, etc. As long as physical activity causes sweating it is considered as exercise. The public health education on the need for people to undertake physical activity (PA) as a primary way of preventing chronic health problems such as diabetes mellitus, obesity and cardiovascular diseases can be sustained through intensive counseling of patients/clients by health care providers who are vast in the practice of PA. Furthermore, this study tries to look for factors associated with regularity of exercise and to find association between knowledge and attitude on practice of exercise. A total of 276 participants will be selected to answer self-administered questionnaire. Likert scale was used for participants to answer the questionnaire on KAP and the total score for each knowledge, attitude and practice was computed to find the associations using EPI info version 6.0 and SPSS 21