Actitudes y prácticas sobre alimentación y actividad física en estudiantes internos de Medicina de la Universidad de Cuenca de la corte mayo/2022 –abril/2023

Abstract

Background: Currently, overweight and obesity are the major health concerns in the young population. Medical students have the responsibility of health promotion for which it is necessary that they reinforce their practices and attitudes focused on better nutrition and therefore a good quality of life. Objective: to determine the attitudes and practices on nutrition and physical activity in medical interns of the University of Cuenca from May 2022 to April 2023. Method: descriptive study of quantitative orientation, the information was obtained from surveys conducted to 74 medical interns prior to signing the informed consent. The data were tabulated in the SPSS 23.0 program, and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the information, based on frequencies and percentages, and the results were presented in tables. Results: According to the demographic characteristics of the study group, female sex predominated with 59.5%, mean age was 25.8 years and marital status was single in 95.9%; attitudes about eating were positive, while eating practices were negative, due to the fact that the inmates do not carry out any control over their weight or diet, and finally attitudes about physical activity were negative, but a high level of physical activity was obtained with more than 3000 MET-min/week. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that medica interns have negative attitudes and practices in relation to food, so we conclude that this population requires a direct approach to their nutritional health and although the level of physical activity is high due to the workday, only 12.2% of the population performs other moderate level physical activity outside of work hours.