Abstract Manager

Oral

OE2-1-2

Accept

I declare I have no actual or potential conflict of interest in relation to this program.

no

General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)

Oral

Education Innovation

Student

yes

Exercise Prescription Curriculum Re-design in the UBC Faculty of Medicine

Canadians are insufficiently active, leading to an increased risk of premature mortality and over 35 chronic health conditions. Exercise prescription increases physical activity and creates significant health benefits, but few Canadian physicians use this tool. A lack of knowledge or training was the second most common barrier to its use cited by physicians, and UBC Medicine students have described themselves as not prepared to prescribe exercise, which perpetuates this lack of use.

We reviewed relevant literature to determine best practice content and teaching methods, which were used to develop an exercise prescription spiral within the UBC Medicine curriculum. By revising and expanding existing case-based sessions across all disciplines in 11/56 (19.6%) of pre-clinical weeks, we were able to deliver a comprehensive exercise prescription curriculum with no additional curricular time or resources required. The principles of exercise prescription were introduced, reviewed and integrated with the prevention and management of chronic conditions across the lifespan. The principles of behaviour change were included as a foundation for the use of exercise prescription in clinical practice.

Initial informal student and facilitator feedback was positive and indicated a desire for wider integration of exercise prescription content and further condition-specific recommendations, which will be goals of future projects. Our approach to integration proved a good solution to adding content to a full curriculum and was supported by faculty leadership. This worked well for UBC Medicine's spiral curriculum, as small amounts of content could be reviewed and built upon in later sessions but may require alternative solutions in different curricular models.

Exercise prescription

Chronic disease management

Physical activity

Undergraduate

Curriculum

Undergraduate

Distributed Medical Education

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes