Abstract
BackgroundResident doctors are continuously exposed to prolonged working hours and night shifts, making them susceptible to the many physical, psychological, and cognitive side effects of sleep deprivation, which may affect their quality of life. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of sleep penury in resident doctors and to assess the association between self-apprehended sleepiness and quality of life.MethodsA cross-sectional study was carried out in the governmental hospitals in the North of the West Bank between May 2017 and September 2017. Doctors enrolled in residency programmes completed questionnaires about general, sociodemographic, and sleep characteristics. The doctors completed the Arabic Version of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ArESS) to assess subjective daytime sleepiness and the RAND 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36) to determine quality of life.ResultsA total of 101 participants were enrolled. Daytime sleepiness was observed in 37.6% (n = 38) of the participants with an ESS score of ≥10. There was a notable negative correlation between the ESS and quality of health index in the physical composition (r = − 0.351, p < 0.001) demonstrated in the following four subscales: the physical functioning (p < 0.001), role limitations due to physical health (p = 0.045), body pain (p = 0.036), and general health (p < 0.001) components of the SF-36 scale. Females and residents of the centre region had poorer mental quality (p = 0.006 and 0.020, respectively).ConclusionsMore than one third of the resident doctors suffer from daytime sleepiness according to the ESS. This was proven to significantly affect several aspects of their quality of life, including physical function and health, body pain, and general health. Sleep deprivation and improvement of quality of life require health promotion actions among medical residents.
Highlights
Resident doctors are continuously exposed to prolonged working hours and night shifts, making them susceptible to the many physical, psychological, and cognitive side effects of sleep deprivation, which may affect their quality of life
Health-related quality of life in the participant residents The means of the social functioning (SF)-36 subscales were calculated in Table 2, and the results, as shown in Additional file 1: Table S1 and Table S2, indicate a statistically significant difference in all of the subscale components with different variables at p < 0.05 except for mental health, which showed no significance
Role physical was significant in residents living with their family (p = 0.043)
Summary
Resident doctors are continuously exposed to prolonged working hours and night shifts, making them susceptible to the many physical, psychological, and cognitive side effects of sleep deprivation, which may affect their quality of life. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of sleep penury in resident doctors and to assess the association between self-apprehended sleepiness and quality of life. Sleep deprivation affects many physiological and psychological aspects of one’s life [1,2,3]. One of the many professions that is continuously exposed to prolonged periods of sleep deprivation is that of a resident doctor. The prolonged working hours of resident physicians make them vulnerable to the consequences of sleep penury, which affects their task performance and quality of life [10].
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