Exercise prescriptions

Physical activity is a highly effective treatment for many types of chronic diseases.

Regular physical activity benefits both our physical and mental health and is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and disease prevention. Through their Green Prescription primary health care exercise initiative, the Ministry of Health actively encourages health professionals to prescribe physical activity as part of general patient health management.

Objectives:

By the end of this short course you should be able to:

• Understand the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)* recommendations for exercise preparticipation health screening.
• Be able to prescribe physical activity and exercise to treat common chronic diseases.
• Be able to identify patients who require further evaluation (including specialist review and exercise tests) before starting an exercise programme.
• Have an understanding of some of the barriers to implementing an exercise programme and mitigate some of these.

* In NZ, we follow the established ACSM recommendations because they are generally considered the most well recognised international guidelines for exercise prescription.

Acknowledgements

This content was written by Dr Karen Falloon MBChB, FRNZCGP, PhD, and updated by Dr Helen Joyce Fulcher MBChB, DipPaed, PGCertHSc(Sports Med), in 2021.