Publication:

A cross sectional study to assess the sleep hygiene among the post graduates of KIMS, Hubballi

Background Problems related to sleep and poor sleep quality are important issues for medical students. Poor sleep quality is a stressing and worrying condition that can contribute to the risk factors of medical errors being made, adverse events and attention failure which has an impact on individual’s health, hence the objective of this study was to assess the sleep hygiene among post graduate medical students of KIMS, Hubballi.

Methods A cross sectional study consisting of 260 post graduates of all departments of 1st, 2nd and 3rd year were chosen by convenient sampling method. A semi-structured questionnaire which included socio-demographic data, data to assess sleep quality by Pittsburgh sleep quality index, attention performance by EPSS scale, psychological health by self reported questionnaire 20 and data regarding factors affecting sleep. Data were entered in MS excel and analysed using SPSS software version 21.0 and suitable statistical tests were applied.

Results Our study included 122 male and 138 female post graduates, it was found that sleep quality was better among males. Excessive daytime sleepiness indicating sleep loss, was assessed by using EPSS questionnaire, which showed that in our study that 63.1% have normal attention performance. Score >17 on EPSS was 4.2% which shows that it has a negative impact on sleep hygiene.

Conclusions Poor sleep hygiene may be associated with poor sleep quality and excessive day time sleepiness. Stress and regular exercise were highly associated with sleep quality, the junior post graduates have significantly poor sleep quality than the senior post graduates.