Perfil do nível de realização de atividade física em estudantes do curso de medicina do Centro Universitário do Pará (CESUPA)

Abstract

This research has sought to analyse the level of physical activity of medicine students from the Centro Universitario do estado do Para, in light of the importance of practicing physical exercises in all stages of life, especially at the stage of life the subjects find themselves and considering the many challenges they face at this stage in their lives. To undertake the evaluation, the students responded the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) which contains questions surrounding the students’ daily routine and their relationship with the practice of physical exercises. At the end of the questionnaire, the students were classed as: sedentary, irregularly active, active or very active. The result of the questionnaire made possible to identify how many students do not practice physical activity, how many do not practice enough physical activity, the motives behind students abstaining from practicing physical activities and the period in which they have more difficulty in maintaining an exercise routine, with the objective of creating solutions for these issues and examine in which way the institution can instigate positive change to reverse the sedentary behaviour of some students. Having regard to the relationship between physical activity and good academic performance, this study tackled the importance of physical activity for the student’s quality of life and the issues its absence may create for the student’s performance and general health. The data has been expressed in the form of average +-, standard deviation, median and interquartile deviation and 95% confidence intervals, as appropriate, and presented in tables or figures. The normality of the distributions was verified by the D'Agostino and Pearson Normality test. This paper evaluated 256 students, distributed from the 1st to the 12th semester. The results have shown that 45,2% of first-year students practice less physical activity than necessary for good health and school performance. In the second year, the number is 62% and in the third year, 56.9%. This trend only reverses in the last year of college, where the number of active or very active students is 50.1%. The study clearly showed the need for students to increase physical activity.