Mental and Physical Health Perspectives of Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Medical school is a rigorous curriculum of both education and clinical training to prepare students for their careers as physicians, potentially predisposing them to dysfunctions related to stress, mental or physical health, and sleep. In this study, medical students from a United States osteopathic medical school were asked to complete four surveys pertaining to mental, physical, and sleep health perspectives. Across the surveys and medical school classes, areas which received poor scores in terms of well-being were related to stress, diet, sleep, pain, and depression. Better sleep efficiency scores, sleep latency scores, PSQI Total Scores, and worse physical health in terms of physical functioning and limitations were reported on average in parallel with the progression through the four years of medical training. These findings warrant further investigation into whether poorer sleep quality is a consistent finding among medical students at the beginning of their training and if it in some way relates to the reported effects on physical functioning demonstrated by medical students later in their training.