Practice guideline update recommendations summary: Disorders of consciousness: Report of the Guideline Development, Dissemination, and Implementation Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology; the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine; and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.

Abstract

In this issue of Neurology, Dr. Salas and a team of sleep medicine and medical education experts representing 6 major academic centers report on the need for and value of a formal sleep medicine curriculum in medical school. Not only are sleep medicine disorders extraordinarily common—affecting 1 in 6 Americans, according to survey data—but they are strongly tied to a swath of other comorbid conditions, ranging from cardiovascular disease to synucleinopathies. The authors also acknowledge that a heightened awareness of sleep hygiene among medical trainees may improve their own wellness and attenuate physician burnout. Dr. Sethi expresses some reservation that additional curricula may only add to the burden imposed upon medical students during their neurology clerkship. Instead, Dr. Sethi writes, perhaps sleep medicine should be incorporated into trainee education at the residency level. In response, Dr. Strowd and colleagues acknowledge this barrier. They emphasize the importance of pre-clerkship and longitudinal exposure to sleep medicine in order to crystallize these clinical concepts. By enriching the medical school curriculum with dedicated sleep medicine training, the authors hope that evaluating patients with sleep disorders will no longer be a sudden awakening.