ABSTRACT
Sleep is an active, repetitive and reversible state of perceptual disengagement from the environment including unresponsiveness to it. Adequate sleep is extremely important for healthiness. But sleep loss is a remarkable problem in modern society. The objective of this study was to investigate the sleep pattern and its association with students’ academic performance. It was a cross sectional study conducted among 4th year UKM undergraduate medical students of session 2011-2012. Inclusive of all 234 registered 4th year students was selected for this study. A standard questionnaire that contained questions on demography, sleep habits, academic performance and ideal sleep was used to collect data. Out of 234 students, 186 were responded giving a response rate of 79.5% where 73% were female and 69% resided in-campus. Including weekdays and weekends averagely, 56.2% respondents slept for 6-8 hours, 29.1% for <6 hours and 14.7% slept for >8 hours. An average of 53.35% respondents had in-frequent day-nap, 34.9% frequent and 11.75% had no day-nap at all. Respondents who slept >6 hours were observed to have significantly higher academic performance. It is concluded that, people need to understand the role of sleep and have to take adequate sleep of 6-8 hours per day for health and wellbeing.