Nomophobia and its impact on mindfulness and self-efficacy among nurses: An analytical cross-sectional study in the institution of national importance, Western India.

BACKGROUND

The interaction between people and advanced information and communication technologies results in behavioral addictions, one of them is nomophobia. In a health care setting, nurses constitute a significant proportion of healthcare workers. Therefore, discovering the level of nomophobia and its impact on constructs such as mindfulness and self-efficacy is very important as this might affect the psychological and physical well-being of nurses, which can impact the quality of patient care. The study aimed to assess the level of nomophobia and its relationship with mindfulness and self-efficacy of nurses.

METHODS AND MATERIAL

An analytical cross-sectional study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital. A total of 420 nurses were selected using a convenience sampling technique. Self-structured questionnaire was used to assess socio-demographic characteristics and mobile phone use. Standardized questionnaires were administered in pen and paper format for measuring nomophobia, mindfulness, and self-efficacy. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 was used. Karl Pearson's correlation coefficient and Chi-square test were employed to analyze the data.

RESULTS

The majority of nurses (99.5%) had nomophobia. About half of them (53.3%) had a moderate level of nomophobia. Nearly half of nurses had high level of mindfulness (52.6%) and self-efficacy (53.3%) respectively. Further, nomophobia was found to be negatively correlated with mindfulness (r = -0.289) and self-efficacy (r = -0.278).

CONCLUSION

Nomophobia poses a risk to the mindfulness and self-efficacy of nurses. Continuing education should focus on awareness programs emphasizing good practices in the use of current technologies.