Magnitude and correlates of sleep quality among undergraduate medical students in Ethiopia: cross –sectional study

Abstract

Poor quality of sleep has a negative effect on academic performance of medical students. Quantity and quality of sleep in addition to average sleep time are strongly linked with students’ learning abilities, poor academic performance and poor interpersonal relationship which predispose them to mental illnesses. This study is aimed to assess magnitude and correlates of sleep quality among medical students in Ethiopia. An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted among 576 undergraduate medical students. Data was collected by using interviewer administered structured questionnaires. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess sleep quality. The collected data were entered in to Epi-data version 3.1and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Logistic regression was used to identify the potential determinants of quality of sleep among undergraduate medical students. P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant and strength of the association was presented by adjusted odds ratio with 95% C.I. The prevalence of poor sleep quality among undergraduate medical students was 62% (95%CI, 57.9, 65.3). The mean age (±SD) of the respondents was 21.5(±2.4), with age ranging from 18 to 28 and about 310 (53.8%) were males. Factors like, being depressed (AOR = 1.92,95%CI 1.16,3.19), poor social support (AOR = 5.39,95%CI 2.33,2.49), being stressed (AOR = 2.04,95%CI 1.26,3.31), and poor sleep hygiene (AOR = 3.01,95%CI 1.75,5.18) were associated with poor sleep quality at p-value < 0.05. Findings also showed that, one unit increase in grade point average was associated with 81.5% decrease (AOR = 0.185, 95%CI 0.13, 0.28) in poor sleep quality. A substantial proportion of medical students are affected by poor sleep quality. Routine screening of sleep quality, sleep hygiene, depression and stress is warranted. Moreover, it is better to educating medical students about proper sleep hygiene and the consequences of poor sleep.