Abstract
BACKGROUND: College students are at risk of many sleep disorders that may affect their performance. We conducted this study to identify the sleeping patterns, poor sleep quality factors among medical students, and to observe if there is any relationship between the student's grades and their level of distress.
METHODS: This study was a cross-sectional study that was conducted in King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, College of Medicine (male campus), Riyadh. We included 101 (2nd, 3rd, and 4th year) male medical students who completed a self-administered questionnaire The students sleeping disturbances were evaluated by using Epworth Sleeping Scale (ESS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and their distress was evaluated by the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUD). A relationship between student's distress and their grade was determined by using one-way ANOVA. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.
RESULTS: The mean +/- SD of the number of hours medical students slept was 5.6 +/- 2.6 hours. The most common cause of disturbed sleep was not being able to fall asleep within 30 minutes after going to bed. The mean score for ESS was 8.2 +/- 5.4. Most students had an ESS score <10 indicating that they had a normal amount of daytime sleepiness and good sleep. There was a relationship between the academic year and ESS; a higher percentage of the students in 3rd and 4th year were sleepy (ESS >= 10) than 2nd year (P = 0.04). There was no relation between the student's grades and their level of distress (P = 0.37).
CONCLUSION: Medical students got less actual sleep hours than the optimal sleep duration. However, most had normal day time sleepiness. There was no relation between the student's grades and their level of distress.