Relationship between adequate breakfast consumption and fatigue in the morning class among medical students, Burapha University

บทคัดย่อ

This cross-sectional descriptive research was conducted to determine the relationship between adequate breakfast consumption and fatigue in the morning classroom among 1 ^st - 3^rd year medical students of Burapha University during the second semester of the academic year 2009. The 88 medical students were divided in 2 groups by the criteria of adequate breakfast consumption. There were 32 students in the adequate breakfast consumption group and 56 students in the inadequate breakfast consumption group. The caloric energy of food consumption was based on the protocol of the Institute of Medicine, and fatigues were assessed by using the IOWA Fatigue Scale. Data were analyzed using Chi-square.

The results revealed that 36.4% of the subjects had adequate breakfast intake, whereas 63.6 percent did not. Among the adequate breakfast intake group 46.9% were fatigue during the morning classes. It was  found that there was no significant relationship between the adequate breakfast consumption and fatigue in the morning classes among medical students of Burapha university(Chi-square = 0.02, p=.90). Factors that might be influential to fatigue in this study could be inadequate sleep, irregular exercise and cumulative class-workload.