A questionnaire survey among Turkish physicians about sleep disorders.

We aimed to assess the knowledge of Turkish physicians about sleep disorders and the attitude of the physicians towards sleep medicine. We prepared a 24-item-questionnaire, 7 of the questions were about the attitudes of the physicians and 17 of them were about the knowledge of the physicians. We applied the questionnaire in all university and educational hospitals in Ankara, which is the capital city and the second largest city of Turkey. Two-hundred-fifteen medical doctors from 5 different specialties accepted to answer the questionnaire, and 168 (78%) of them completed the questionnaire. 47% of the physicians rated themselves as they had little knowledge about sleep disorders, and 45% as they had enough knowledge about sleep disorders, however, the overall score was not high. They answered only 45.3% of the questions correctly. In the light of this survey, we concluded that medical education on sleep disorders should be extended both in length and in content to improve the quality of sleep disorders medicine in Turkey.