PHYSICAL FITNESS LEVELS IN MEDICAL STUDENTS AND ITS CORRELATION WITH ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Abstract
Background: Long study hours and being cooped up cramming long prose of medical literature basically
means that medical students in Pakistan have to sacrifice time which could have been spent on physical
activity which equates to poor physical activity.
Objective: The objective of this research is to assess the physical fitness level in medical students and the
correlation between physical fitness and the academic performance of students.
Methodology:
Two hundred and fifty medical students were included in the study. Aquestionnaire was given to the
participant after briefing them regarding the research topic, objectives and what was required of them. All the
data collected was entered in SPSS ver:17. The qualitative variables were presented as frequency and
percentage and the quantitative variables were presented as mean and standard deviation. The independent
variable was cross tabulated with the dependent variable (x) and any association was found using chi square
test of significance. A p value of <or=0.05 was taken as statistically significant.
Results: The study showed that the majority of individuals were of average physical fitness amounting to
172(68.8%). 49(19.6%) individuals had good physical fitness. Of the individuals with poor physical activity
3(10.34%) had poor academic performance.19(11.04%)individuals with average cumulative physical
activity had poor academic performance.
Conclusions: The physical fitness of most of the medical students in the study was of an average level. We
found that those individuals having average physical fitness were academically superior to those who fell on
the extremes of the physical fitness spectrum.