An international study evaluating the appropriateness of podcasts to improve the knowledge and awareness of selected health topics amongst undergraduate general nursing students: Protocol for a feasibility study (Preprint)

Abstract

Research into the use of online podcasts as an educational platform has been ongoing for many years. Podcasts have been shown to be a successful alternative source of educational material for students. With the ability to listen to podcasts 24/7 and while on the go, it may be possible for this technology to provide informative and educational material to a large number of people at any given time. Podcasts are usually freely available on commonly used mobile devices such as smartphone, laptops and tablets. This research will investigate how an informational podcast may impact undergraduate general nursing students' knowledge and awareness of global health topics.

To investigate the impact of health-related podcasts as an intervention tool to support knowledge and awareness of nursing students on a given topic.

Methods Pre- and post-podcast questionnaires will gather data regarding the participants 1) knowledge and 2) awareness on two topics i.e. gestational diabetes and mental health. These questionnaires will be created and managed using Google FormsTM (https://docs.google.com/forms), as it is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant. Microsoft ExcelTM (Microsoft Inc, Mountain View, California, USA) will be used to capture qualitative and quantitative data and to execute descriptive statistics in form of percentages and frequencies. This intervention will be tested on general nursing undergraduate students. The total number (N=2395) of students from the participating universities are broken down as follows 1) Ireland: University College Cork (N=850) and the University of Galway (450), 2) Mzuzu University, Malawi (N=719) and 3) University of Fort Hare, South Africa (N= 376).

The study received ethical approval from the University College Cork Ethics Committee (SREC) (ID 2022-027A1) which will also cover the University of Galway in Ireland, the Mzuzu University Research Ethics Committee (MREC) (ID MZUNIREC/DOR/23/28) and in South Africa, the Inter-Faculty Research Ethics Committee (IFREC) of the University of Fort Hare (ID CIL002-21). As of April 2023, data collection is currently being conducted and will be carried out until the end of September 2023. The quantitative and qualitative data is expected to be analysed in October 2023.

Results from this study will allow for an investigation into the impact of podcasts in different settings, a high-income country (Ireland), upper middle-income country (South Africa) and a low-to-middle income country (Malawi). The data gathered from this feasibility study will provide more clarity on the potential utility of podcasts as an intervention tool. We will gather data regarding listener demographics (country of residence, age, gender, year of study) to ascertain the outreach of the podcasts which could shape future studies on podcasts as an educational tool.