Name: So You Want to Be a SLEEP MEDICINE DOCTOR [Ep. 50]
Uploaded: 2025-10-07T18:39:43.000Z
Duration: 12 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So you want to be a sleep medicine doctor?

You want to sit next to a complete stranger's bed with a clipboard and take notes on how loudly they snore?

Let's debunk the public perception myths and give it to you straight.

Dr. Jubbal medschoolinsiders.com welcome to our next installment in so youo Want to Be.

In this series, we highlight a specific specialty or subspecialty within medicine to help you decide if it's a good fit for you.

You can find our catalog of over 50 career paths so youo Want to Be playlist.

If you don't see the specialty you're interested in, subscribe to help us decide what to cover next on our community poll.

Sleep medicine is an emerging field of medicine that's gaining mainstream popularity due to influencers like Dr.

Andrew Huberman, Dr. Peter Attia, and Brian Johnson, and sleep experts like Dr. Matthew Walker.

More and more people and society as a whole are coming to understand the critical role sleep plays in our health.

Sleep Sleep medicine is not about studying sleep.

It's about studying the processes of human physiology during a state of sleep, understanding the intricate rhythms of different organs, and

the profound impact that sleep has on our physical health, emotional well being and cognitive function.

On a technical level, sleep medicine explores the nuances of various sleep disorders from insomnia to sleep apnea.

It's a multidisciplinary field involving work from several different specialties such as such as internal medicine, ent, endocrinology, neurology, cardiology, pulmonology, psychology, and

Sleep medicine can be categorized in several ways.

First, let's consider the patient population.

Adult sleep medicine focuses on sleep disorders that commonly affect adults such as obstructive sleep apnea or osa, insomnia and restless leg syndrome or rls.

Treatment may involve CPAP therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, also known as cbti, and pharmacological approaches.

Pediatric sleep medicine is dedicated to addressing sleep disorders in children such as pediatric osa, behavioral insomnia and parasomnias, which include sleepwalking and night terrors.

Second, the primary focus of sleep medicine can also differ.

There are respiratory sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea, and sleep related hypoventilation.

Management of these conditions often involves devices like the cpap, bipap, oral appliances, and sometimes surgical interventions.

There are also neurological sleep disorders like narcolepsy, idiopathic hypersomnia and restless leg Syndrome treatment may include lifestyle modifications, specialized therapies and medications like stimulants and dopamine agonists.

Then there's behavioral sleep medicine, which focuses on conditions like insomnia and circadian rhythm sleep wake disorders.

Techniques such as CBT I, light therapy and chronotherapy are commonly used to help patients re establish healthy sleep patterns.

As someone who has struggled with insomnia myself, this has been incredibly helpful for me.

Learn more about the routines, principles and products that work best for me on the Kevin Jubbal, Maryland Channel Sleep Playlist link in the Description Third, sleep medicine physicians can work in different practice settings.

There are academic sleep centers which are often affiliated with universities or research institutions.

These centers combine clinical care with research and education and serve as hubs for studying emerging treatments and training future specialists.

There are also community based sleep clinics that provide accessible care to local populations.

They typically focus on the diagnosis and management of common sleep disorders, offering services such as sleep studies and basic therapies.

Then there are multidisciplinary sleep practices that integrate with other medical specialties, bringing together specialists from pulmonology, neurology, psychiatry, otol, laryngology and behavioral health to address complex or comorbid sleep disorders.

This collaborative approach ensures comprehensive, tailored care is provided to address the individual needs of every patient.

For example, neurologic sleep medicine specialists can become their region's experts in sleep disorders with underlying neurologic conditions.

Or sleep medicine physicians could join a startup or tech company like Apple, Whoop, Aura, or Ultrahuman as a sleep medicine expert who builds technology that scales globally.

They could also go corporate and work with medical device or therapeutic companies to help them deliver better technologies.

Now let's clear up some misconceptions about sleep medicine.

Sleep medicine is not sleep apnea medicine as people often think.

Sleep apnea is only one aspect of sleep health.

Similarly, managing diabetes is not the same as managing metabolic health, and

managing AFIB is not the same as managing cardiovascular health.

Sleep should be thought of as a holistic discipline, a much deeper view of what our body is doing during a state of sleep.

And also continuous positive airway pressure or a CPAP machine is not the only treatment for sleep apnea.

Often people think sleep medicine equals sleep apnea, which equals cpap.

However, sleep medicine is more complex and involves managing many different types of therapies that are coming to market.

There are a number of ways to get into sleep medicine, but

each starts the same with four years of medical school followed by residency at this time.

Sleep medicine does not have its own residency and is instead a subspecialization, also known as a fellowship.

Sleep medicine fellowships follow several different residency programs, including internal medicine, pediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, family medicine, otolaryngology and pulmonology, and

Sleep medicine is typically a one year fellowship, but

it can be as long as two if combined with a research year.

Medical students who are interested in approaching medicine with a holistic lens and are fascinated with a multidisciplinary approach to health that utilizes functional medicine, integrative medicine and alternative medicine will do well in this field.

Since sleep is a relatively new field with tons of opportunities for research and rapid advancements in consumer technology.

Students passionate about research, the future of health, and

entrepreneurship through startups will also find a great deal to keep them engaged.

According to 2023 match statistics, of the 200 certified applicants who selected sleep medicine as their preferred specialty, 183 were matched with a sleep medicine program.

Regarding the match, it's important to keep in mind that sleep medicine is already a relatively narrow subspecialty and there are no formal fellowship options specifically designed to further specialize after completing a sleep medicine fellowship.

While many sleep doctors find a focus area such as research, behavioral sleep, narcolepsy, idiopathic hypersomnia, or restless leg syndrome, there is not much room for further specialization as far as compensation goes.

Since sleep medicine is still an emerging career path, the salary for sleep medicine is less widely reported and varies considerably.

A sleep medicine doctor's salary depends on their primary specialty, training, practice setting, years of experience and industry leadership.

With salaries ranging from 240 to $500,000.

For example, a pulmonologist who pursues further sleep medicine training stay to earn a higher paycheck than a family medicine physician who specializes in sleep medicine.

There's a lot to love about sleep medicine.

If you can improve someone's sleep, you can truly restore their life.

And what's more, you get to see a diverse patient population as 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders.

The lifestyle and work life balance of a sleep medicine physician is also excellent as it's primarily outpatient work with regular nine to five hours and limited night or weekend responsibilities.

You also have the flexibility to combine sleep medicine with other work such as pulmonology and critical care.

It's also an ideal time to get into sleep medicine.

Sleep disorders are quite prevalent in the population, creating a high demand for qualified sleep specialists.

Plus, more and more people are paying closer attention to their health from a longevity and wellness perspective thanks to online longevity and health optimization personalities.

Sleep sleep, along with nutrition and exercise is one of the three pillars of health that makes the largest impact on your well being and effectiveness.

As a popular and growing field, there are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship and key opinion leadership.

You could also collaborate and lend your expertise to the tech sector by working with an established sleep tech company or startup as a medical specialist.

Sleep tech is also developing at a faster and faster rate With AI and sleep medicine, the dynamic nature of wearables, and

the massive data sets that they provide, there's more information about sleep than ever before.

Of course, sleep medicine is not for everyone.

For one thing, it's a slower paced specialty, so it's possible to become bored of reading sleep study after sleep study.

This is especially dependent on what specialty you're coming from.

For example, if you're coming from pulmonary medicine or critical care, you may miss the opportunity to save lives on a daily basis.

Now, while the rapid advancement of sleep technology and research will be a pro for some, it won't be for everyone requires ongoing learning and adaptation.

And because it's such a new field, your work could look completely different a decade from now.

Sleep medicine has many variables depending on the path you take to get there.

It can be more demanding and may require working overnight for sleep studies.

Additionally, you can encounter difficult patients who are not at their best due to lack of sleep.

Sleep deprived patients can be irritable and frustrated with the situation they are in and they may take it out on you.

So should you become a sleep medicine doctor?

Sleep medicine isn't a medical field for adrenaline junkies as a great deal of your time will be spent reading sleep studies and conducting research.

If you're looking for a slower paced career and don't like participating in high acuity care in the emergency department or icu, sleep medicine may be a good fit.

It's also an excellent field if you're interested in holistic medicine.

Sleep is a foundational component of our health, which means it involves several fields of medicine.

You can customize your career based on your interests and you'll be able to interact with a number of colleagues from different specialties.

For example, the expert contributor for this guide, Dr. Sahil Chopra, started out as an intensivist and pulmonologist.