Bridging the gap between clinicians and fitness professionals: a challenge to implementing exercise as medicine.

Objective: Health clubs (HC) and personal trainers (PT) are traditional outlets for the promotion of physical activity (PA) and exercise programming. As physicians are increasingly being called on to write exercise prescriptions for their patients, this study sought to investigate the level of integration between the healthcare and fitness systems.

Design: An internet study was designed with five domains to understand physicians': (1) overall perception of HC, (2) appropriateness and recommendation of HC and PT to their patients, (3) attitude regarding specific aspects of HC, (4) support of patient participation in HC sponsored exercise and (5) elements of HC that physicians would like to know for referral.

Practice patterns, counseling and promotion of physical activity by sports medicine physicians.

Objectives: This study examined sports medicine physicians with an established interest in physical activity to investigate attitudes surrounding exercise, physical activity and patient-counseling behavior. The degree to which physicians' personal knowledge of physical activity and related resources, involvement with common activities, and perceived barriers were assessed.

Design: An internet survey was designed in four domains: (1) counseling behavior, (2) tools and resources, (3) appropriateness of common physical activities for patients and (4) barriers.