Nocturnal Sleep Quality and Daytime Sleepiness Among First and Second Year MBBS Students

Abstract

BACKGROUND Medical students are more prone to have poor sleep quality because of stress, and greater academic commitments. Studies from different countries have reported that medical students have daytime sleepiness, poor sleep quality, and higher prevalence of sleep complaints than the general population. But these studies differed on the effect of gender on sleep. There is a correlation between sleep quality and academic performance of college students. Daytime sleepiness affects performance. METHODS We conducted a cross sectional analytical study on the sleep quality assessed by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the sleep quality reported by students and the daytime sleepiness assessed by Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) among 272 first and second year MBBS students of Govt. Medical College, Kottayam. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS Version 22.0. χ2-test was used to evaluate the association between the variables, independent samples t-test for continuous variables, Pearson's test for correlation, Mann-Whitney U test to compare the sleep quality and daytime sleepiness of first-years with those of secondyears and multinomial logistic regression analysis for confounding factors RESULTS Most of the first and second year MBBS students have good quality of sleep as per self-reporting and as assessed by PSQI and have higher normal daytime sleepiness. The poorer the sleep quality assessed by PSQI, the greater is the daytime sleepiness. Gender does not affect the quality of sleep and daytime sleepiness. Second year students have better sleep quality than first year students. CONCLUSIONS Most of the first and second year MBBS students in our institution have good sleep quality and higher normal daytime sleepiness. Poorer the sleep quality, greater is the daytime sleepiness. Gender has no effect on sleep quality or daytime sleepiness.