Dados do Trabalho

Título

Sleep knowledge in Health Education: do we teach enough?

Introdução

The difficulty in correctly diagnosing sleep disorders lies, to some extent, in problems in the technical-scientific training of health professionals in sleep-related issues. Despite the relevance and expression of the sleep field in research and graduate courses in Brazil, undergraduate teaching focusing on the expression of normal sleep and its pathologies is mostly optional, complementary, or based on insertions during classic disciplines in undergraduate courses.

Objetivo

To evaluate the knowledge about the physiological expression and the main sleep pathologies in undergraduate students in health courses in a Brazilian Federal University.

Métodos

Students from the physiotherapy and nursing undergraduate courses (n=111, 21.8土3.5 years old, 68% women) completed the translated and validated version of the ASKME (Assessing Sleep Knowledge in Medical Education) questionnaire, a tool for estimating knowledge about sleep.

Resultados

48.6% of the students correctly answered more than 50% of the questions in the questionnaire, with no difference between the different courses (Mann-Whitney U=1725, p=0.14). As for the time of formal sleep education (in hours), pairwise comparisons using Dunn's test confirmed that students submitted to more than 15 hours of dedicated learning on sleep differed from the group without formal learning (p<0.04) and from the group with up to 5 hours of learning (p=0.03). Concerning the analysis of the isolated components of the ASKME, we showed that the highest correlation with the final score was found for the domain of neurobiological bases (Spearman rho = 0.73, p<0.001), while the lowest was found for the sleep-disordered breathing domain (Spearman rho=0.40, p<0.001).

Conclusões

Students showed average performance comparable to other samples from other institutions previously studied. Given the superior performance of students with more than 15 hours of formal sleep education, we reinforce the need to increase the number of hours of teaching on sleep in undergraduate health courses. Finally, we emphasize a discrepancy between the knowledge of the different domains covered by the ASKME, highlighting the need to expand the teaching of sleep-disordered breathing.

Palavras-chave

ASKME questionnaire, sleep education, teaching, sleep