The Prevalence of Excessive Daytime Sleepiness Among Clinical Year Medical Students and Its Impact on Academic Performance

Abstract

Objective: Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is commonly found in medical students and affects academic performance. The primary objective was to study the prevalence of EDS in 4th–6th year medical students of Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand. The secondary objective was to investigate the relationship between EDS and grade point average (GPA). Methods: The cross-sectional study was taken by 196 medical students of Srinakharinwirot University using a questionnaire collected with Google Forms. The data were collected from June 17 to November 26, 2021, and the information was composed of age, sex, GPA, summarizing the lesson into short notes, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index, sleep duration, caffeine drink, energy drink, and lesson review duration. Results: Our study found that the prevalence of EDS was 73.98%. In the high EDS group, they had poor sleep quality 80.69%. In addition, the factors consisted of the female sex (odds ratio [OR]: 0.426, p=0.017, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0. 238–0.761) had statistically significant in good GPA. However, the study did not show a correlation between EDS and GPA (OR: 1.073, p=0.957, 95% CI: 0.491–2.119). Furthermore, sleep quality, sleep duration, amount of caffeine drink, amount of energy drink, and lesson review duration were not associated with GPA. Conclusion: Most medical students had EDS, but it was not associated with grade point average. Female gender had correlation with the good academic performance (good GPA).