Impact of Sleep and Psychological Well-Being on the Academic and Clinical Performance of Nursing Students in Saudi Arabia [Letter]

Dear editor

Newly, with strong interest, we have perused an original article titled “Impact of Sleep and Psychological Well-Being on the Academic and Clinical Performance of Nursing Students in Saudi Arabia” by Benjamin et al.¹ This is a valuable study exploring the relationship between physical and mental health of nursing students and their practical performance. This study has the following advantages: (1) Sleep deprivation and psychological distress are prevalent in nursing students worldwide. Paying attention to the sleep and psychological wellbeing of nursing students and promoting their better performance is the mission of nursing educators and practitioners. This study provides practical guidance for nursing educators and practitioners; (2) The authors presented clear reasons for exploring the impact of sleep and psychological wellbeing on the academic and clinical performance of nursing students; (3) This study used Rao software online sample calculator² to estimate sample size, which was fast and convenient; (4) The authors compared their research results thoroughly with previous studies, and analyzed the reasons for the inconsistency between the results. Additionally, the authors provided valuable suggestions on how to improve the sleep quality and mental health of nursing students, and enhance their academic and clinical performance.

However, there are also some limitations and areas for improvement in Benjamin’s study: (1) The authors used convenience sampling to recruit nursing students. To ensure the representativeness of the sample, we recommend the authors to employ random sampling method;³ (2) There are several areas in the text that need to be checked and corrected: (a) Page 1357, the description of “The items were rated on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree)” was wrong, it should be “The items were rated on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree)”.⁴ (b) page 1360, lines 7–8, the content of “However, there was no statistical significance between good/very good performance and acceptable performance with respect to overall psychological well-being (p>0.095)” was repetitive. (c) The authors need to verify every data in Table 4, especially the data in “Academic Performance”, some of which are incorrect; (3) The authors only used univariate analysis (t-test, chi-square test) to examine the impact of sleep, psychological well-being, and demographic factors on the academic and clinical performance of nursing students. We suggest that they use multivariate analysis (such as logistic regression) to explore the impact of these variables on academic and clinical performance.

Further research directions of this study: (1) To dynamically observe the sleep and psychological well-being status of nursing students through longitudinal research, in order to develop real-time and targeted interventions, improve their sleep and mental health, and promote their better performance; (2) Setting students from other healthcare professions as a control group to compare the differences in sleep, psychological wellbeing, and practical performance; (3) Regarding academic and clinical performance, identifying different subgroups of nursing students through latent class analysis (LCA), exploring the influencing factors of different latent classes of practical performance, so as to provide evidence for developing personalized interventions.