Knowledge and attitude of medical students towards sports medicine.

Background. Sport is a large part of the Nigerian culture. A huge proportion of her people are involved either as a form of relaxation or as employment. Individuals involved in sports require special care that enfolds education on injury prevention, treatment of sport-related injuries and rehabilitation of patients with sport-related injuries. The management of such patients should therefore be of significant importance to healthcare providers. Methodology. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Stratified random sampling method was used and data collection was done using pre-tested, self-administered questionnaires which were analyzed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 15.0. Results. The College of Medicine of the University of Lagos (CMUL), Nigeria, was the area of study in this research. Two hundred and forty-five (245) medical students took part in this study. The response rate was 89%. Mean age was 21±2.8 years. Over half (50.6%) of the respondents were females. Most of the respondents were single (99.2%), Christian (80.7%) and of the Yoruba ethnic group (72.3%). It was found in the overall knowledge score that most of the respondents (63.7%) had good knowledge of sports medicine. A large proportion of the respondents (79.2%) were aware of sports medicine having school (52.8%) as their main source of information. The factors found to influence the overall knowledge of respondents were curriculum (p=0.000) and level (p=0.000). Overall, almost all the respondents (99.2%) had a positive attitude towards sports medicine. Majority (95.0%) of the respondents felt training in sports medicine is essential however; about half of them (46.7%) felt that medical students are not adequately trained in sports medicine. Conclusion. Majority of the medical students of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos (CMUL) are aware of sports medicine and have a positive attitude towards it. They would only need to build on this knowledge and attitude to be adequately skilled to manage patients involved in sports and physical activity. It is recommended that sports medicine be incorporated into the medical curriculum of the CMUL as this would boost the level of knowledge and encourage specialization in sports medicine among medical students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]