The Evaluation of Sleep Disturbances for Chinese Frontline Medical Workers under the Outbreak of COVID-19

Jing Qi; Jing Xu; Bozhi Li; Jinsha Huang; Yuan Yang; Zhentao Zhang; Dongai Yao; Qunhui Liu; Min Jia; Daokai Gong; Xiaohong Ni; Qimei Zhang; Furong Shang; Nian Xiong; Chunli Zhu; Tao Wang; Xi Zhang

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.06.20031278 doi: medRxiv preprint 1 7 improve sleep disturbances in fMW. However, with the import of supportive fMW from other regions of China, the work duration of fMW may be decreased. By comparison, the non-fMW worked in a relatively mild environment and had less possibility of being infected, thus having less sleep disturbances. Our study also found that scores of PSQI among female fMW were significantly higher than that of male fMW although other scores showed no significant difference, which indicated that female fMW had worse sleep quality than male fMW in emergent events of public health. In a meta-analysis, Zhang et al. 29 calculated a hazard ratio of 1.41 for female versus male toward insomnia. In general, females had inferior symptom bearing and more bodily vigilance, and the social culture encouraged females to express the indisposition more, 30 which potentially exaggerated the severity and prevalence of sleep disturbances. In addition, females tended to report more sleep problems even if having a similar degree of morning awakening compared to males. 29 Our study has several limitations that should be noted. First, this is a cross-sectional study. All subjects were volunteered to participate in the survey, so there may be subject selection bias. Second, other occupations who directly expose to COVID-19 patients may experience sleep disturbances potentially, such as police and social workers, but our study merely included the medical workers. Third, our questionnaires did not contain sufficient items, such as the potential risk factors for sleep disturbances of fMW, which can provide more information and be used to explore the underlying mechanisms. Forth, our study lacked of interventions and . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.