Impact of Poor Sleep Quality on the Academic Performance of Medical Students

Introduction: Adequate sleep has a crucial role in enhancing cognitive skills especially memory retention. Poor night time sleep quality and the consequent daytime sleepiness affect physical and cognitive health of students and their academic performance. The aim of this study is to find whether or not poor academic performance is a consequence of poor sleep quality among Pakistani medical students.

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. Academic performance was assessed by mean grade point average (GPA) of the students. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 22.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).

Results: There were 512 (64.24%) students with global PSQI score ≥5 indicating poor sleep quality. The mean GPA of poor sleepers was 2.92 ± 1.09 which was significantly lower than that of good sleepers (p < 0.0001). In the group of students who scored lower GPA (2.0-2.7), 28.2% had very bad subjective sleep quality, 29.05% had sleep latency of 16-30 min, 29.4% had sleep duration of <5-7 h, 27.8% had sleep efficiency of <85%, and 37.7% experienced daytime dysfunction almost every day.

Conclusion: Medical students of Pakistan have poor sleep quality which has a negative impact on their academic performance. Adequate sleep is essential to refresh the students every day and help them in learning and memory processing. Medical students and their facilitators should comprehend the negative effects of sleep deprivation on student academics and should take adequate measures to improve the sleep quality of students.