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