Impact of Continuing Medical Education (CME)-Based Sensitization on Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU) Among Medical Students: A Longitudinal Study.

BACKGROUND

Smartphones are being used both for leisure and learning, with young people being the most common users. Problematic smartphone use (PSU) negatively affects mental state, sleep, cognition, and academic achievement in college students. Therefore, in the present study, we assessed PSU in medical students before and after conducting a continuing medical education (CME) on "Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG-3): Deaddiction of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and Smartphones".

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Eighty medical students (aged 18-20 years) participated in the study. A CME was conducted at a tertiary care medical school in India in collaboration with the Heal Foundation and Asian Coalition for Health Empowerment, aligning with SDG-3 and the Doctor Against Addiction (DaAD) campaign. Smartphone addiction scale-short version (SAS-SV) was administered, and the screen time was recorded using "Your Hour," a phone addiction tracker, and "Screen Time," an iPhone application, before and after 15 days of CME. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (IBM Corp., Armonk, New York).

RESULTS

The mean age of students was 18.9(0.6) years. A paired t-test was used to compare the mean SAS-SV score and screen time before and after CME. There was a significant reduction in the screen time t (78) = 9.686, p<0.001, after CME. However, the SAS-SV score was not significantly reduced. A Cronbach's alpha correction coefficient of 0.872 for SAS-SV suggests good internal consistency. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.815 (95% CI, 0.750-0.880) with a cut-off SAS-SV score of 29.50 (sensitivity: 0.902; specificity: 0.620).  Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that CME on de-addiction served as an effective intervention for sensitization of students, as evident from the reduced screen time. Further, SAS-SV could serve as a valid and reliable tool to assess PSU. Therefore, the need of the hour is to create awareness about PSU among the youth and make them aware of self-assessment tools such as phone apps to track screen time.