The Relationship between Cellphone Usage and Sleep Quality among Hospital Staff

Despite the two decades of using cell phones, there are still considerable controversies about the biological effects of the Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) produced by cell phones. Sleep disorder among hospital staff is an important issue for the health care system not only due to the health of its employees but also to the reduction of the staff performance quality and the increase in medical errors. This study aimed to explore factors that may affect the sleep quality of hospital staff and to examine the association between sleep quality and cell phone usage.

In this study, participants consisted of 288 employees (35.51 ± 8.42 years old) of two hospitals, and their sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh sleep quality index.

Sixty-six percent of participants had good sleep quality and nearly 68% of the employees worked in shifts. The cell phone use among participants averaged 10.74 ± 3.03 years, and less than half of the staff stated that call durations of their cell phones were less than 5 h/day. More than 90% of the staff mentioned no use of hands-free. There were no statistically significant differences between job characteristics, sleep quality, and items related to cell phones, except the use of hands-free.

In our study, using hands-free during phone calls was associated with poor quality sleep. Different factors, such as decreased levels of electromagnetic fields reaching the brain, can be involved in this effect. These results must be interpreted with caution due to the low number of subjects and the limitations of our study.