Smartphone usage among Malaysian undergraduate nursing students during clinical placement

• Main Authors: Atan, Ashikin, Zahari, Izzati, Lee, Siew Pien
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kulliyyah (Faculty) of Nursing, International Islamic University Malaysia 2020
• Subjects: RT71 Study and Teaching
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/87318/2/Smartphone%20Usage%20Among%20Malaysian%20Undergraduate%20Nursinf%20Student%20During%20Clinical%20Placement.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/87318/; https://journals.iium.edu.my/ijcs/index.php/ijcs/article/view/155

Introduction: Smartphone has become one of the basic needs in daily life, especially in health care settings. Besides acting as a medium of communication, this modern technology acts as a tool for healthcare providers to access medical and health information and manage their schedule. The adoption of smartphones has given positive impacts on nursing students in clinical learning experiences. However, as the number of smartphones utilisation increases, nursing students face the risk of violating a patient’s privacy and confidentiality, which might affect their professionalism as well. Objectives: This study aimed to assess the smartphone usage among undergraduate nursing students during clinical placement. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at one of the universities in Malaysia. Convenience sampling method was used to select the sample, and 202 participants were involved in this study. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Result: The result showed that the majority of the nursing students in this study (82.7%) had used smartphones during their work hours in clinical practice. They mainly used the smartphone for work-related purposes, including searching for information on drugs, patients’medical or health condition, patient care and patient education materials, and communicating with their teammates. Nevertheless, some students used the smartphone for non-work-related activities, such as online shopping, checking or posting a status on social media and playing online games, as well as communicating with friends and family. Moreover, about half of the students reported asking for consent before taking pictures (51.5%) and never or rarely share clinical images (53.4%).