71.43% doctors are sleep deprived: Study

Manmeet Singh Gill

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 2

A study conducted by junior resident doctor Oshin Thomas, working with the ENT department at Government Medical College (GMC), has revealed that most resident doctors are sleep deprived and suffer from daytime sleepiness.

Dr Oshin was recently awarded gold medal for her presentation of research during annual conference of the Indian Association of Surgeons for Sleep Apnoea. She has conducted a survey on resident doctors at GMC here and results are startling.

The results reveal that 71.43 per cent resident doctors are poor sleepers, 53.24 per cent have daytime sleepiness of which 46.75 per cent have excessive daytime sleepiness. The results further reveal that 40.26 per cent residents have mild to moderate stress, 44.16 per cent have mild to moderate anxiety and 31.16 per cent resident doctors suffer from depression of which 18.18 residents suffer from moderate to severe depression.

The study is startling because of not what residents doctors have to go through but also because chances of a sleep deprived doctors committing mistakes while attending a patient are higher. Sleep deprivation can adversely affect cognitive and psychomotor skills and causes serious performance deficiency. A few of the studies conducted on sleep deprivation internationally point out that sleep deprivation, more or less, causes the same level of psychomotor dysfunction as caused by alcohol consumption.

Dr Oshin said, “Most residents work for 48 or even 72 hours at a stretch.” She said that medical colleges should have counselling mechanism to deal with students suffering from stress and anxiety.

While junior residents often work for long hours, Central Residency Scheme guidelines circulated by the Union Health Ministry in 1993, following the 1988 instructions of the Supreme Court, state that junior resident doctors cannot be subjected to a maximum of 48-hour duty in a week. Also, single-stretch duty cannot exceed a maximum of 12 hours.

Dr Jagdeepak Singh, professor and head, department of ENT, said the college was proud of Oshin for bringing laurels to the institute. He said the results were disturbing and need serious efforts to improve the conditions. He said the department had also won silver medal in quiz completion in which Oshin along with Dr Kamana Jyotsna Devi had participated.