Smartphone Usage Among Malaysian Undergraduate Nursing Students During Clinical Placement

Abstract

Introduction: Smartphone has become one of the basic needs for each person in daily life especially in health care setting. It acts as medium for the healthcare providers to communicate through e-mail, access information regarding the disease and drug information as well as managing their schedule. The adoption of smartphone had given the positive impact on nursing students in clinical learning experiences. However, as the number in utilizing it increases, it may expose the healthcare providers to risk of violation of patient privacy and confidentiality as well affecting their professionalism. Objectives: This study was aimed to examine the smartphone usage among undergraduate nursing students during clinical placement. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at one of the university in Malaysia. Purposive 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 majority of the nursing students in this study (82.7%) have used smartphone 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 as well as communicating with their teammates. Yet, there were students who used smartphone for non-work-related activities such as online shopping, checking or posting status on social media and playing online games as well as communicating with friends and family.