Association of sleep quality and memory performance among medical students in coastal South India

Stress, a lack of time management and lifestyle changes have compromised the health of today’s youth. Medical students, who constitute a substantial portion of this population, are particularly vulnerable. In addition to these stressors, medical students face considerable challenges in terms of their academic demands, clinical responsibilities and examination-related pressure, which collectively lead to chronic sleep deprivation and compromise their well-being. Medical students must assimilate and retain a plethora of information, which requires optimum memory. These students often complain of not being able to recall information, which may be due to several factors, such as stress and inadequate sleep. Hence, this study aims to identify any potential associations between the quality of sleep and memory among medical students. This was a cross-sectional study conducted among undergraduate students of a medical college. The study population included 228 students from the 1st to 4th years of the MBBS. Students who provided consent were required to fill out a Google form consisting of a pretested semistructured questionnaire. The global PSQI score (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) and Prospective Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) score were used to assess the associations between sleep and memory via the chi-square test. A total of 194 of 228 students were found to have poor sleep quality according to the global PSQI score. The mean memory score assessed through the PRMQ was 37.07, with a standard deviation of 11.617. The study revealed that 1st -year medical students were comparatively more sleep deprived than other medical students. The study also observed that female students had poorer sleep quality than male students even though statistically not significant. A vast majority (85.1%) of the participants had poor-quality sleep. Higher scores on the PRMQ (indicating poor memory) and higher scores on the PSQI (poor sleep quality) revealed a significant association between poor quality of sleep and poor memory (p value < 0.001).