A study of the sleep patterns and problems of Medical Students in Bangladesh

Aim: The aim of the present study is to describe sleep habits and sleep-related problems among the medical students in Bangladesh. Method: This was a cross-sectional study over four weeks in the year 2021 at different medical colleges in Sylhet, Bangladesh. The sample size was 192.Using purposive sampling technique, data were collected digitally using Google Forms as a self-administered questionnaire. Data were examined using Stata version 16.All the descriptive statistics were measured and reported accordingly. Results: A total of 192 medical students were enlisted with age is 21.3±1.8years. All the respondents have slept for 6.2 ±1.54 hours every night with taking on an average of 36.5 ±35.3 minutes to fall asleep. The ESS score for all the respondents is 7.9 on average with a standard deviation of 4.83.Sleep quality is reported fairly bad by 31 (16.6%) students and very bad by 12(6.4%) students. Poor sleep quality is usually reported in association with sleep latency, nightmares, incidence of night-time awakenings, and time of going to bed. However, 87% of students have refused to take any over-the-counter medicine to induce sleep despite having sleep problems. Most of the students prefer to use social media (76.2%) before they go to sleep which may attribute to their sleep disorders. Majority of the students (73.7%) responded study stress is the culprit of their lack of sleep, followed by over thinking (47.3%) and social media use (38.2%). Conclusion: Medical students are exposed to high academic demands, which may affect their sleep pattern. Poor sleep quality with undue daytime sleepiness can affect their mental capability required for good academic performance.