O'Sullivan Elizabeth, Cutts Emily, Kavikondala Sushma, Salcedo Alejandra, D'Souza Karan, Hernandez-Torre Martin, Anderson Claire, Tiwari Agnes, Ho Kendall, Last Jason
School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
JMIR Med Educ. 2017 Jan 4;3(1):e1. doi: 10.2196/mededu.6304.
Social media is an asset that higher education students can use for an array of purposes. Studies have shown the merits of social media use in educational settings; however, its adoption in health science education has been slow, and the contributing reasons remain unclear.
This multidisciplinary study aimed to examine health science students' opinions on the use of social media in health science education and identify factors that may discourage its use.
Data were collected from the Universitas 21 "Use of social media in health education" survey, distributed electronically among the health science staff and students from 8 universities in 7 countries. The 1640 student respondents were grouped as users or nonusers based on their reported frequency of social media use in their education.
Of the 1640 respondents, 1343 (81.89%) use social media in their education. Only 462 of the 1320 (35.00%) respondents have received specific social media training, and of those who have not, the majority (64.9%, 608/936) would like the opportunity. Users and nonusers reported the same 3 factors as the top barriers to their use of social media: uncertainty on policies, concerns about professionalism, and lack of support from the department. Nonusers reported all the barriers more frequently and almost half of nonusers reported not knowing how to incorporate social media into their learning. Among users, more than one fifth (20.5%, 50/243) of students who use social media "almost always" reported sharing clinical images without explicit permission.
Our global, interdisciplinary study demonstrates that a significant number of students across all health science disciplines self-reported sharing clinical images inappropriately, and thus request the need for policies and training specific to social media use in health science education.
社交媒体是高等教育学生可用于一系列目的的一种资产。研究表明了在教育环境中使用社交媒体的优点；然而，其在健康科学教育中的应用进展缓慢，且促成原因仍不明确。
这项多学科研究旨在调查健康科学专业学生对在健康科学教育中使用社交媒体的看法，并确定可能阻碍其使用的因素。
数据收集自21世纪大学联盟“社交媒体在健康教育中的应用”调查，该调查以电子方式分发给来自7个国家8所大学的健康科学教职员工和学生。1640名学生受访者根据其在教育中使用社交媒体的报告频率分为使用者或非使用者。
在1640名受访者中，1343人（81.89%）在教育中使用社交媒体。在1320名受访者中，只有462人（35.00%）接受过特定的社交媒体培训，而在未接受过培训的人中，大多数（64.9%，608/936）希望有机会接受培训。使用者和非使用者报告了相同的3个因素作为他们使用社交媒体的主要障碍：政策不确定性、对专业性的担忧以及缺乏部门支持。非使用者更频繁地报告了所有障碍，几乎一半的非使用者报告不知道如何将社交媒体纳入他们的学习。在使用者中，超过五分之一（20.5%，50/243）“几乎总是”使用社交媒体的学生报告在没有明确许可的情况下分享临床图像。
我们的全球跨学科研究表明，所有健康科学学科的大量学生自我报告不恰当地分享临床图像，因此需要针对健康科学教育中社交媒体使用的政策和培训。
