Sleep deprivation is an unpleasant burden of young hospital doctors during their medical training.
It may disrupt the balance between coping strategies available to them and the professional demands encountered. Impaired medical care offered by sleep-deprived juniors may be a consequence. Valid research work on this subject is rare and surprisingly contradictory. Standardized and reliable psychometric tests thought to represent daily routine medical function were performed. On-call activities were recorded by means of a sleep diary, whereas a questionnaire interrogated aspects of private and professional life.