Introduction:

Sleep is a physiological state that occurs cyclically in many living beings of the animal kingdom, and the behaviours of rest and activity, that form the sleep-wake cycle, have been the subject of studies. Undergraduate medical students are faced with a lack of time and exhaustion, since the course entails full time study, which fact means that the students put off basic activities more and more until the end of the day, and thus develop sleeping disorders.

Objective:

To analyze the quality of sleep and the incidence of sleeping disorders among medical students.

Method:

The research was conducted individually with medical students from a college in the south of Minas Gerais, via the Google Forms platform, whereby the student answered two self-administered questionnaires. The first encompassed questions about gender and year of undergraduate study and the second assessed quality of sleep, referring to the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Bioestat 5 and Excel 365 programs were used for statistical analysis.

Result:

Analysis of the study found sleep disturbance among 20.5% of the students and poor or very poor quality of sleep among 40.2% of the students.

Conclusion:

The research showed that the quality of sleep among medical students is lower than that of the general population, and is directly related to the progression of the course. It was concluded that the students in this study have, on average, fewer hours of sleep than the rest of Brazilians.

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