Determination of exercise prescription frequency and accompanying factors with cognitive behavioral physical activity scale and physical activity questionnaire in primary stage

Aim: In this study, it was aimed to determine the frequency of exercise prescribing and related factors of primary care physicians, as well as to investigate the effects of physical activity levels and cognitive perceptions of physicians on exercise prescribing behavior. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with family physicians working in family health centers in the province of Hatay. In the study, the 'Physical Activity Questionnaire in Primary Care' and the 'Cognitive Behavioral Physical Activity Scale' were used, as well as a questionnaire evaluating the practice and knowledge of physicians on exercise prescribing. In this study, all 505 family medicine units in Hatay were reached and the study was completed with 221 family physicians. Results: In this study, it was found that only 1.4% (n=3) of physicians always prescribed exercise to their patients. The group that physicians always prescribe exercise was mostly in obese patients with a rate of 18.1% (n=40), the least in asthma-COPD patients with a rate of 4.5% (n=10), and only 8.6% of physicians (n=40). n=19) of them were found to feel sufficient about writing an exercise prescription. It was observed that 50.2% of the physicians participating in this study were sedentary and there was a relationship between the physician's own definition of daily activity and the rate of exercise prescribing (p=0.005). In addition, it was observed that the physicians' cognitive perception scores on this subject were 3.53±2.16 on average and those with higher cognitive perception total scores prescribed more exercise (p=0.049). Conclusions: This research shows that physicians still do not prescribe exercise at the desired levels and the reasons for this are the physician's lack of knowledge on this subject, lack of motivation, inadequacy of primary care conditions, low cognitive perception on this subject, and low physical activity status of physicians. level of knowledge shows that many subjects need improvement, be it the approach of physicians.