Introduction

The formation of the Intercollegiate Academic Board in Sport and Exercise Medicine represents the first step towards recognition of sport and exercise medicine as an individual specialty, with its own higher specialist training programmes, leading to the establishment of sport and exercise medicine departments within the NHS. However, sports medicine is not an exclusively postgraduate activity and there is increasing interest among medical students. The opportunity for students to direct their own learning goals is in keeping with changes to undergraduate medical education suggested by the General Medical Council (GMC) in their paper entitled Tomorrows' doctors.¹ One of their recommendations was to supplement the core curriculum with “special study modules”, offering students the opportunity to study, in depth, areas of particular interest. This “new” undergraduate curriculum was introduced into medical schools in the academic year 1997/1998.

Our aim was to study the level of interest in the teaching of sport and exercise medicine in undergraduate medical schools, with specific objectives to record the proportion of schools with formal and informal teaching of sport and exercise medicine, the extent of teaching, and in what context it was taught.

Method

This was a questionnaire study of medical schools in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The first draft of the questionnaire was drawn up by the authors. It was appraised for content …