0973 Improving Sleep Medicine Education among Medical Trainees

Despite increasing recognition of the deleterious health effects of sleep disorders, exposure to sleep medicine education remains limited during medical training. Several tools have been developed and validated to assess sleep knowledge among medical professionals. The two most widely used tools are the ASKME survey (30 True/False questions) and the Dartmouth Sleep Knowledge and Attitude Survey (24 multiple-choice questions). We sought to assess the baseline knowledge of a group of advanced medical trainees, and to determine whether an educational lecture series "boot camp" led to improvement in sleep medicine knowledge. The University of Maryland Sleep Fellowship Program hosts an annual "Sleep Boot Camp" in July for beginning sleep fellows from five nearby academic institutions, as well as other interested medical trainees. The program consists of two days of didactic lectures on pertinent topics in basic sleep principles, sleep physiology and clinical sleep medicine. Participants in the 2017 and 2018 boot camps were asked to complete the ASKME and Dartmouth Sleep Knowledge surveys prior to and then at the conclusion of the boot camp. A total of 21 trainees, of whom 14 were current sleep medicine fellows, completed both pre- and post-surveys. The baseline ASKME score was 21.4 ± 3.4 out of 30 questions (71.4 ± 11.4%) and baseline Dartmouth score was 16.1 ± 2.4 out of 24 questions (67.3% ± 9.9%). There was no difference in baseline scores between sleep fellows and other trainees. There was a statistically significant improvement in both ASKME (2.9 ± 2.1 points, p=0.004) and Dartmouth (2.5 ± 3.0 points, p=0.001) scores among all participants after attending the boot camp, but there was no difference in the degree of improvement among sleep fellows compared to other medical trainees. Our findings suggest that baseline sleep medicine knowledge is higher than previously reported among medical trainees. Education in sleep medicine results in improvement in knowledge among medical trainees, even among those with a high baseline knowledge and interest in the field of sleep medicine. Support (If Any)