The effect of exercise habi̇ts of cardiologists on the exercise prescription

Objective: This paper aims to investigate the role of cardiology specialists' professional characteristics and their individual patterns of physical activity on prescribing exercise to the patients. Method: Letter of invitations were sent via email to the potential participants contacted through national cardiology associations. The data were collected by means of a web-based survey filled by cardiology specialists. Results: A total of 256 cardiologists participated in the study. The mean age of the participants was 41.6 ± 8.4. Participants worked as physicians for an average of 17.4 years and as a cardiologist for 11.5 years. Of the total sample, 74.6% of the participants were male. While 37.9% of the participants stated that they are currently doing regular physical activity / exercise / sports, 66.8% said they were doing sports only in the past. 80.1% of cardiology specialists looked into the patients' exercise patterns, 96.5% verbally recommended their patients to exercise and 14.8% gave a written exercise prescription. The reasons behind not providing an exercise prescription can be listed as the shortage of time (59.4%), physician's doubts on his/her competence in this kind of prescription (27.0%), reservations about patients' willingness on following the prescribed exercise program (23.0%) and feeling insecure about prescribing exercise (10.9%). The ratio of cardiologists recommending patients to exercise was higher both in men than in women and those who regularly did physical activity / exercise / sports than who did not. The ratio of physicians recommending exercise to their patients found to be greater in the group working in the university than employed in other institutions. Various other professional characteristics (years of experience as a physician and as a specialist, the number of patients examined per day, the time allocated to a patient) are found to be having no effect on physicians' recommendations on exercising and their approach to exercise prescriptions. Cardiologists who followed exercise regimens in the past and present tend to give a higher rate of written exercise prescriptions. Conclusion: Although vast majority of cardiology specialists verbally recommend physical activity / exercise / sports, only few prescribe these suggestions. The fact that a physician has exercised in the past and present has a positive effect on his/her approach to recommending exercises and giving exercise prescriptions.