Sleepiness and Clinical Readiness in Prelicensure Undergraduate Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND: Sleep deprivation is common among undergraduate nursing students and may affect cognitive processing and clinical decision-making. While clinician fatigue is well studied, less is known about how student sleepiness relates to foundational skills performance. PURPOSE: This study examined associations between self-reported sleepiness and clinical readiness during standardized skills checkoffs. METHODS: In a cross-sectional sample of 83 students, participants completed the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and 6 faculty-graded skills evaluations. Mann-Whitney U tests and logistic regression assessed relationships between sleep variables and pass/fail outcomes. RESULTS: Higher Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores corresponded with higher KSS values, and some skills showed more failures at higher sleepiness levels. Only medication administration differed significantly by KSS group (U = 338, P = .016). Other skills and the logistic model were nonsignificant. CONCLUSION: Descriptive trends suggested possible links between sleepiness and performance, but inferential results were inconsistent.