Lack of sleep and its association with academic progress of undergraduate students of foundation university medical college, islamabad, Pakistan

The objective of the study,isto compare the relationship between lack of sleep and the academic performance of the undergraduate students of a medical college of Pakistan. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a medical college of Pakistanin April 2016. Subjects were recruited by non-probability convenient sampling. A total of 140 subjectswereasked questions about sleep by a properly designed questionnaire from 2nd to 5th Year MBBS. Students having a prior diagnosis of sleep disorder were excluded from study.Data was analyzed using SPSS version 18. RESULTS: A total of 101 females and 39 males participated in the study. Duringnon-exam days, 41.14% of the students slept less than seven hours. The figure approached 80% in exam days. Cross tabulation failed to reveal a correlation between hours of sleep and academic performanceSpearman correlation showed a negative academic performance with less sleep in fourth and fifth year students. CONCLUSION: Students sacrifice their sleep during exams particularly girls. However, the association of sleep hours and academic performance was not established in this study. In fact, there was a negative association between academic performance and decrease sleep in fourth and fifth year students