The Correlation between Sleeping Patterns and Academic Performance for TAU Medical Students

Abstract

Sleep is very essential to promote proper functioning as human beings. Yet, in the “medical society”, whether as a student or practitioner, it’s a known fact that a lot of individuals struggle with different types of sleep disorders of varying degrees. Recent studies have been able to shed light on the detrimental effects of inadequate sleep on the general health and productivity of a person. The Circadian rhythm dictates the body’s natural bedtime-wakeup schedule. The better the quality of sleep, the less likely we are to experience significant daytime sleepiness. When a student has to do 8 courses, go to school for 10 hours and do extracurricular activities like volunteering, the time it will take to cover all of those tasks, sleep seems almost impossible for medical students. Regardless of whether previous students, now practitioners, were able to complete these tasks does not indicate that there is no problem. It is important we research this correlation because we need to know if this aspect in our day-to-day lives affects our outcome in academics. As students, we are expected to do a lot in a short span of time and pass exams with flying colours. As such, we must investigate one of the proposed factors that leads to poor academic performance in students. For the purpose of this research, our sample community would be limited to Texila American University Students in MD1-MD4. Keywords: Academic, Medicine, Performance, Pittsburgh, Students, Sleep.