The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on sleep quality in healthcare workers in Turkey

Ayşegül Erdoğan; Deniz Tuncel Berktaş; Ali Nuri Öksüz; Ahmet Rıza Şahin; Burhan Fatih Koçyiğit

doi:10.1186/s41983-022-00489-3

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on sleep quality in healthcare workers in Turkey

Egypt J Neurol Psychiatr Neurosurg. 2022;58(1):58. doi: 10.1186/s41983-022-00489-3. Epub 2022 May 20.

Authors

Ayşegül Erdoğan¹, Deniz Tuncel Berktaş², Ali Nuri Öksüz³, Ahmet Rıza Şahin⁴, Burhan Fatih Koçyiğit⁵

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Medicine, Department of Public Health, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Batı Çevreyolu Blv. No:251/A 46040, Onikişubat, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
² Faculty of Medicine, Department of Neurology, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
³ Kahramanmaras Provincial Health Directorate, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
⁴ Faculty of Medicine, Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
⁵ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious concerns and psychological distress globally. Healthcare workers remain one of the most affected groups due to life threatening risks in addition to increased working hours and labor intensity. All these factors may affect sleep quality of this population. The aim of this study is to evaluate the sleep behaviors of healthcare professionals working in secondary and tertiary hospitals in a large population in Turkey and to show how sleep quality is affected during the pandemic process using the easily applicable Jenkins Sleep Scale (JSS). The population of this cross-sectional descriptive study consists of two pandemic hospitals determined in Kahramanmaraş province. In our questionnaire, we asked subjective sleep quality, sleep time, time to fall asleep, total sleep time, and medication use. We also used JSS Turkish version (JSS-TR) to assess sleep quality and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) for increased daytime sleepiness.

Results: Healthcare workers who participated in our survey reported that they started to go to bed later, fell asleep later (mean: 41.75 ± 35.35 min), their total sleep time (mean: 6.67 ± 1.88 h) was shortened, and they needed medication to sleep more (5.7%) after the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, bedtime behavior after 24:00 decreased from 80.1 to 43.9% of those who previously went to bed before 24:00. For those who went to bed after 24:00 before, it increased from 19.9 to 56.1%. In addition, sleep quality as assessed by subjective and JSS significantly deteriorated after the COVID-19 pandemic. Excessive daytime sleepiness increased. Those with ESS > 10 before and after COVID-19 were 3.9% and 14.1%, respectively (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly adversely affected the sleep behavior and sleep quality of healthcare professionals. The JSS is an easily applicable scale for assessing sleep quality in large population studies.

Keywords: COVID-19; Healthcare workers; Jenkins Sleep Scale; Sleep quality.