Daytime sleepiness in medical students at Mazandaran university of medical sciences, 2003

Background and Sleepiness is a major public health problem. Several reasons such as shift work, long time studying, etc, are the cause of sleepiness in medical students, which affect their academic performance. The aim of this study was to assess the level of daytime sleepiness in medical students. Â descriptive study designed to evaluate the daytime sleepiness of 100 medical students (25 from each group of basic science, physiopathology, stager and intern) by using Ëpworth sleepiness scale (ËSS) questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 10, and analytic tests. From 100 participants, 48% male, 81% single and 58% living in their own house, with mean age of 23.3 ± 3.3 and 8% were drug addicts. Ït revealed that, 53% of the students had enough sleep (score up to 6), 23% had moderate daytime sleepiness (scores 7,8) and 24% had daytime somnolence (scores 9 and over 9), 53 % were sleeping less than 8 hours at night. There was no statistically significant correlation between the level of sleepiness and age, sex, marital status, education and accomodation condition. However significant relationship was observed between sleepiness and substance abuse (p<0/05). Çonclusion: Âlmost half of the students suffered daytime somnolence. Therefore further investigations with more cases in order to find the other possible factors are recommended.