Sleeping Pattern of Medical Students Preceding Viva Examination and Their Performance

Sleep is an important determinant of keeping healthy physically and mentally. Deviation in sleep is a common problem among students during examinations. The purpose of this study is to determine students' sleep pattern during night preceding viva examination and its correlation with performance.

This was a cross-sectional prospective study conducted between January and February 2014 among 1st and 2nd year MBBS students of National Medical College, Birgunj, Nepal who appeared in University's final practical examinations. Based on simple random sampling approach, each of the 280 participants was allowed to pick out five pieces of lottery papers and they were asked the five questions resembling the number in the list of questions.

Among the total 280 students, 74.6% were from India and 25.4% were from Nepal, and majorities (63%) of them were males. Fifty two percent of the students either could not sleep at all or slept just for 1 to 1.5 hours while 12% slept for 5 to 6.5 hours. Two-third (66%) of the students was able enough to achieve one to two scores, and only 1.8% could succeed to get the maximum score of five. The correlation between hours of sleep preceding examination and the score achieved was positively (r=0.701) and statistically significantly correlated (p<0.001).

There is a trend among the medical students either not to sleep or sleep only for few hours preceding viva examination that result in poor performance in examinations.