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Table 4 Sleep Quality and Disturbances among Healthcare Workers during the COVID Pandemic

From: Mental health impact on healthcare workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a U.S. cross-sectional survey study

Sleep characteristic

Total sample

Age groups

Gender

Occupational risk factors

18–34

35–44

45–59

 ≥ 60

Male

Female

Direct patient contact

Non-direct patient contact

Respiratory clinical setting

Non-respiratory clinical setting

Average nightly sleep duration during the past 4 weeks

           

Mean (SD)

6.4 (1.2)

6.3 (1.2)

6.4 (1.2)

6.4 (1.6)

6.6 (1.1)

6.5 (1.1)

6.4 (1.2)

6.4 (1.2)

6.5 (1.3)

6.3 (1.2)

6.4 (1.2)

Median (Range)

6.0 (2.0–14.0)

6.0 (3.0–12.0)

6.0 (2.0–10.0)

6.0 (3.0–14.0)

7.0** (3.0–9.0)

7.0 (2.0–9.0)

6.0* (2.0–14.0)

6.0 (2.0–14.0)

7.0* (3.0–12.0)

6.0 (3.0–9.0)

6.0 (2.0–14.0)

Sleep Patterns (% with pattern)

           

Poor sleep quality

67.1

74.9

67.4

65.7

54.1***

57.1

69.7***

67.6

65.5

70.9

66.5

Difficulty concentrating because of poor sleep

30.6

42.7

32.0

26.4

14.7***

21.1

33.2***

31.1

30.3

32.1

30.4

Difficulty falling asleep

36.0

46.5

35.2

33.3

23.8***

23.7

39.1***

35.0

35.2

39.8

35.3

Difficulty staying asleep

50.4

51.2

49.4

52.8

43.8*

39.7

53.3***

49.9

50.3

53.0

49.9

  1. Survey items assessing sleep characteristics were obtained from the PROMIS Sleep-Related Impairment and Sleep Disturbance item banks (Buysse et al., 2010). Non-parametric tests were used to test whether the distributions for average sleep time significantly differed between subgroups. Two outliers (i.e., values of 24) were removed from the analysis. Wilcoxon two-sample tests were used to test for differences in sleep time across categorical variables with two levels (i.e., gender and occupational risk factor groups). Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to test for differences across categorical variables with more than two levels (age groups). Chi-square tests were conducted to test for significant differences in the distribution of derived binary variables by age, gender, and occupational risk factor groups
  2. ***p < 0.001
  3. **p < 0.01
  4. *p < 0.05