Sleep quality among medical students of Karachi, Pakistan

Objective: to characterise sleep quality and assess degree of daytime sleepiness among medical students of karachi. methods: the cross-sectional study was conducted between august and december 2013 and subjects were recruited from five haphazardly selected medical colleges in karachi. a convenience sample of medical students underwent two validated self-administered questionnaires i.e. pittsburgh sleep quality index and epworth sleepiness scale. spss 17 was used for statistical analysis. results: of the 650 students approached, 504(77.5%) subjects completely filled out the questionnaires. of them, 300(59.5%)were females and 204(40.5%)weremales. overallmean agewas 20±1.4 years. of them, 199(39.5%)were classified as poor sleepers. poor sleep quality was associated with female gender (p <0.05), excessive daytime sleepiness (p <0.05), total hours slept (p <0.001) and sleep disturbances (p <0.001). bed-timing analysis showed 365(72%) students went to bed after midnight. conclusion: sleep quality among pakistani medical students was significantly poor. efforts must be directed towards proper sleep hygiene education.