Introduction:

Sleep quality affects physical and mental health and its alteration in university students hinders memory processes, concentration, and learning capacity. In Colombia, studies on sleep patterns focus mainly on medical and nursing students and few of them identify its relationship with academic load.

Objective:

To describe sleep quality changes during an academic semester and according to education cycles in university students from a health and rehabilitation program in Cali, Colombia.

Materials and methods:

Descriptive prospective study, which applied the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index at the beginning and end of the semester to 241 Physiotherapy, Nutrition, and Occupational Therapy students.

Results:

Most participants were women, aged 20 years old or younger, and belonged to medium to low socioeconomic strata. At the beginning of the semester, 76.35% of students were able to sleep 7 hours or more and at the end this population decreased to 49.79%. At the beginning of the study, 24.9% displayed poor sleep quality, whereas this group increased to 54.36% at the end.

Conclusions:

There was a significant increase in poor sleep quality at the end of the academic semester, the change being greater in students from the professional cycle.

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