Abstract
INTRODUCTION: This study aims to determine the sleep quality and its relationship with anxiety and depressive symptoms, working conditions and other factors among the frontline pulmonologists on active duty during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: An online survey was conducted among pulmonologists in Turkey. The survey link was e-mailed to the members of the professional societies of pulmonologists. The volunteers were asked to fill in questions about their sociodemographics, medical and psychiatric history, working and housing conditions, perceived levels of support during the pandemic, as well as the sleep habits before the pandemic. Also, questions investigating the severity/level of their worries were inquired and they were asked to fill in two scale forms (the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index-PSQI). RESULTS: The sample consisted of 179 pulmonologists who were divided into two groups according to PSQI as good sleepers (PSQI ≤5) and poor sleepers (PSQI >5). It was observed that 59.2% of the participants had poor sleep quality during the pandemic. Being anxious (p<0.0001, Odds ratio [OR]=0.139, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] [0.052-0.372]), working in intensive care unit (p=0.046, OR=2.363, 95% CI [1.015-5.497]), worry level about excessive increase of the number of patients above the capacity of the institution they worked in (p=0.018, OR=1.755, 95% CI [1.102-2.794]) and being dissatisfied with ones' sleep before the pandemic (p<0.016, OR=0.272, 95% CI [0.094-0.786]) were found to be the main factors that negatively affected the quality of sleep of pulmonologists during the pandemic. CONCLUSION: More than half of the pulmonologists in our sample group had low sleep quality during the pandemic. For establishing a good sleep regime for clinicians, its crucial to consider certain interventions on the affecting factors.