[01] Jeevitha Palasamy, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [02] Sangkradhevan Krishna Moorthy, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [03] Nanayakkarawasam Maenu Ruwanka Bodinagoda, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [04] Puornisha Thurai Singam, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [05] Prashanth Ravi, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia.

Medicine is one of the toughest education fields that require immense scholastic performance. Therefore, students reserve more time improving their academic performance which lead students to undergo mental and academic stress with compromise in sleep quality. We aimed to determine the level of academic stress and sleep quality, sources of academic stress, and association of academic stress and other factors associated with sleep quality disturbances. A cross sectional study was conducted among undergraduate clinical year medical students of Melaka Manipal Medical College. An online questionnaire which consisted PSQI (Pittsburgh sleep quality index) scale and the PAS (perception of academic stress) scale, was distributed and 178 responses were collected. The data was statistically analysed using chi square test and simple linear regression in Epi info version 7.0 software. From the data analysed 34.8% have very high stress, 38.8% have high stress, 18.5% have moderate stress, 4.5% have low stress and 3.4% have very low stress. The examination and workload subscale were the highest contributor to academic stress with mean score of 25.2 followed by academic self-perception with mean of 18.7 and academic expectation with mean of 10.5. Furthermore, 57.9% of medical students have poor sleep quality and among them 70.6% students had poor sleep due to noise disturbance making them 1.96 times more likely to have poor sleep quality due to noise disturbance and it showed significant positive association. (OR=1.96, 95% CI=1.13-0.34, chi square=5.558, p-value <0.016). We also found that there is significant positive association between sleep quality and academic stress (correlation coefficient r=0.264, p-value<0.001) where when the perception of academic score increases the PSQI score also increased showing that there is a poor sleep quality among medical students with high academic stress. However, there were no significant associations found between sleep quality and other factors associated with sleep quality. In summary, most students are found to have sleep disturbances due to academic stress and noise disturbances which lead to poor sleep quality. Thus, we recommend students involve themselves in physical activities, consume healthy diet, keep themselves organized, and seek for help from reliable source like counsellors to help them cope with their stress in a better manner. We would also recommend institutes to have a flexible academic schedule as it may reduce the workload and as well encourage students to participate in cocurricular activities that may help students to overcome the academic stress and poor sleep quality.

Academic Stress, Sleep Quality, Cross Sectional Study, Medical Student, Malaysia

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