Meaningful Use of Social Media, Information Technology, and Applications in Nursing Education: A Multi-Site, Cross-Sectional Study Among Senior Nursing Students.

This is a multi-site, cross-sectional survey conducted aimed to explore personal experience and meaning use of social media, information technology and applications in nursing education. Three-hundred forty-two senior nursing students participated online from various nursing schools in the northern Philippines after ethics clearance obtained. Descriptive statistics and content analysis used to analyzed data. Nursing students are neutral to agree on the meaningful use of social media particularly the use for teaching and learning nursing subjects (33.3%). In seeking online information, it was found that diseases (88%), its risk factors (78.7%), signs and symptoms (58.2%). The use of applications, it showed that Medscape (29.5%) got the highest apps usually used, followed by drug application (25.4%) and vaccination guide (25.1%). Four content issues emerged: availability of internet connection, reliability and trustworthiness of online data, privacy and credibility of online sources, and personal issues. The adoption of information technology is a useful means for personal health, and for teaching and learning the importance of nursing and medical subjects. The improvement of nursing informatics curricula is to consider the inclusion of evidence-based learning activities maximizing use of social media and applications in the program. But much attention on the reliability and trustworthiness of online information and references is worthy to look into.