Sleep deprivation and junior doctors' performance and confidence

To determine whether sleep deprivation affects not only junior doctors' performance in answering medical questions but whether their ability to judge their own performance is also affected by lack of sleep.

A questionnaire based follow up study in two district general hospitals of the Carmarthenshire NHS Trust. Eleven house officers and 15 senior house officers (SHOs) within the medical directorate participating in the on-call rota were recruited between July 1999 and May 2000.

SHOs answered significantly more questions correctly (p=0.04) and were more confident than house officers when they were either correct or incorrect (p<0.001). Length of unbroken or continuous sleep is associated with more correct answers (p=0.03) and higher energy (p=0.09) and confidence (p=0.07) scores self rated by the profile of mood states. Length of continuous sleep was not related to the appropriateness of confidence, as measured by the "within-subject confidence-accuracy correlation" (p=0.919).

SHOs performed better than house officers even allowing for sleep loss. Sleep deprivation had adverse effects on mood and performance but junior doctors can still monitor their performance and retain insight into their own ability when sleep deprived.