Effects of Sleep Quality and Quantity on Academic Performace and Feeling of Medical Students

Background: the performance of students in their academic life is reflected by their sleep habits and timing, this research has been done in order to get a deeper understanding of the relationship between quality and quantity of sleep and academic performance among the medical students of Ovidius University.

Methods: The study was conducted on 30 randomly selected medical students of Ovidius University (English division), 55% male and 45% female, by collecting their sleep timing for 2 weeks, followed by a self-report questionnaire (PSQI) to obtain more details. Furthermore, PSQI global scale (pittsburgh sleep quality index) was used to assess the sleep quality over a 2 week time interval. Regarding the academic performance, students were divided based on their grades into three categories (excellent, very good, good).

Result: difference in students’ academic performance was noticed, 36% got an excellent performance, 45% got a very good performance, 19% got a good performance, medication usage was not reported by most students (87%), yet a small number (3%) used medication to sleep better. The average sleeping time for male 6h29, female 6h25, the sleeping rate was the same for both genders 3.2 out of 5, PSQI scale for female was 6.98 points and for male it was slightly higher with 0.4 points which indicates they have a worse sleeping habit.