Comparison of the Status of Sleep Quality in Basic and Clinical Medical Students

Introduction Academic pressure and its associated stress are responsible for disturbances in the circadian cycle of the students. Adequate sleep has crucial role in enhancing cognitive skills especially memory retention. Poor night time sleep quality and consequent daytime sleepiness affects physical and cognitive health of the students. In this study, sleep quality among medical students is evaluated. Methods It was an observational, cross-sectional study conducted with undergraduate medical students. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess the sleep quality. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 22.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Results Of 281 students, 155 (55.16%) were pre-clinical students and 126 (44.83%) were clinical students; 207 (73.66%) were female students and 74 (26.33%) were male. The overall frequency of poor sleepers was 172 (61.2%); 95 (55.2%) of these were clinical sciences and 77 (44.8%) were basic sciences students. Sleep latency, duration, and efficiency were more impaired in clinical students (p-value ≤ 0.05). Use of sleep medications and daytime dysfunction was more common in clinical students (p-value ≤ 0.05). Conclusion Medical students are continuously under high academic stress and pressure. Adequate sleep is essential for them to refresh them every day and help in learning and memory processing. Medical students in advance years of education have worse sleep quality than those in early years. Efforts should be taken to improve their sleep quality in order to protect the psychological and emotional health of future doctors.