Awareness of Medical Students toward Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disorder Based on Biomedical Diagnosis

BACKGROUND: Sleep disorders affect an individual's mental and physical health and vice versa. Sleep medicine is underrecognized as a specialty; therefore, many sleep disorders go undiagnosed. This study is aimed at assessing the knowledge of medical students toward circadian neuroscience and sleep disorder based on biomedical diagnosis. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in both male and female medical colleges from the third to the sixth year. A self-administered structured questionnaire consisting of sociodemographic data and the Assessment of Sleep Knowledge in Medical Education (ASKME) survey assessed the students' general knowledge and attitude towards sleep disorder and sleep medicine. Chi-square/Fisher exact tests were used to analyse the participants' knowledge level toward specific sociodemographic data. Also, for two-level continuous variables, the Wilcoxon two-sample test was used. RESULTS: The total number of participants was 296, with 154 female and 142 male participants. The prevalence of inadequate knowledge was considerable with 96.62% of students, compared to adequate knowledge with only 3.38%. The students' attitude to sleep medicine was negative 14.53% and positive among 85.47%. We found that gender was significantly associated with attitude with a p value = 0.0057. The specific interest in sleep medicine had a significant association with knowledge and attitude, p value of 0.0522 and 0.0059, respectively. CONCLUSION: This study concluded that medical students possess inadequate knowledge regarding sleep medicine, yet they have a positive attitude towards it.