• Gregory A Peters, Matthew L Wong, and Leon D Sanchez.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: gregorypeters826@gmail.com.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2020 Jan 1; 38 (1): 118-121.

ObjectiveTools to measure physical activity, such as pedometers, have become more prevalent and attracted popular interest in recent years. Despite this trend, research has not yet quantified pedometer-measured physical activity among Emergency Physicians. This study aims to provide the first characterization of physical activity among on-duty Emergency Physicians in terms of step count.MethodsEmergency Physicians wore Empatica E4 research-grade accelerometers while performing routine clinical care in the Emergency Department. A publicly available algorithm was used to estimate the number of steps taken.ResultsFifty-one Emergency Physicians, including thirty-four residents and seventeen attending physicians, contributed over 1500 h of accelerometer data. On average, this cohort took 577 steps per hour (SD: 72.6), totaling 4950 steps per recorded shift (SD: 737.8), which is approximately 2.6 miles (SD: 0.31). Residents walked more than attending physicians (595.9 steps per hour (SD: 99.7) vs 563.0 steps per hour (SD: 89.0), respectively; p = 0.02).ConclusionThe average emergency physician in this cohort walked roughly half the daily recommended number of steps during their recorded shift. Residents walk significantly more than attending physicians.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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