Sleep Knowledge and Behaviors in Medical Students: Results of a Single Center Survey

There is little known about the demands of medical school on students' sleep behavior. The study's main goal was to examine the interplay between medical students' sleep knowledge, personal attitudes towards sleep, and their sleep habits.

An anonymous online survey was created and emailed to all students enrolled at a large metropolitan medical school. Data on demographics, sleep perception, and habits in addition to self-reported measures of students' sleep knowledge, beliefs, and sleepiness were collected.

There were 261, out of a possible 720, responses to the survey. While 71.5% of respondents believed that they needed >7 h of sleep, only 24.9% of respondents stated they average >7 h of sleep. During the week of an examination, only 15.3% of students stated they averaged >7 h of sleep. A comparison of pre-clinical and clinical students revealed that reported median sleep during a school or rotation night was significantly lower in clinical students as compared to pre-clinical students while mean sleep during examination weeks between the two groups was not statistically different. In regard to sleep knowledge, clinical students were more knowledgeable (65.53% correct) than pre-clinical students (39.83% correct) (t(1) = -8.9, p = .00). However, there was no difference in the assessment of dysfunctional beliefs between the two groups (66.0 for preclinical students, 64.7 for clinical students (t(1) = 0.37, p = .71)) while clinical students had a higher score of sleepiness compared to pre-clinical students (9.12 to 7.83, t(1) = -2.3, p = .023).

A majority of medical students are sleeping an inadequate amount of time during their 4 years, and as they progress from the pre-clinical to the clinical years, the amount of time they sleep decreases even though their knowledge about sleep increases. Increased awareness around sleep health is required beyond sleep education, as medical students appear to need help translating knowledge into strategies to improve their own sleep and well-being.