eHealth literacy and internet use among undergraduate nursing students in a resource limited country: A cross-sectional study

• Main Authors: Kirubel Biruk Shiferaw, Eden Abetu Mehari, Tewodros Eshete
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-01-01
• Series: Informatics in Medicine Unlocked
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352914819301054

Background: eHealth literacy empowers caregivers and patients to actively engage in healthcare decisions. Most prior studies regarding eHealth literacy have been done in developed countries, and the perspective of nursing students in a resource-constrained environment is not well documented. The aim of this study was to assess Internet use and eHealth literacy skill among nursing students at the University of Gondar, North West Ethiopia. Methods: An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the pattern of Internet use and eHealth literacy among nursing students at the University of Gondar, College of Medicine and Health Science, from November 15 to January 28, 2018. The total sample size was 236. A stratified random sampling design with a proportional allocation technique was performed to select study participants from each batch. eHealth literacy was measured using the widely used and validated eHealth literacy scale (eHEALS). After data collection was done, it was checked, cleaned, and analyzed by using SPSS Version 20. Descriptive statistics were utilized to identify socio-demographic characteristics and Internet use of participants, and the total sum of eHealth literacy scale was used as a dependent variable with linear regression done to identify predictors. Result: From the total of 236 approached participants, 229 participants were included in the study, and thus the response rate was 97.3%. The mean age of participants was 20.66 ± 1.45 years and the average cumulative GPA was 3.07 ± 0.40. Overall, 89.1% of nursing students reported that they have access to the Internet, of which 60.7% of the participants use it daily. Only 22.7% of survey respondents said that they use Internet for educational purposes, while a majority of the users (52.8%) stated that they use Internet for social media and chat rooms. The mean eHealth literacy level was 25.23 with a 7.29 standard deviation. The linear regression result depicted that 72.6% of the variation in eHealth literacy is explained with an adjusted R2 = 0.726 in this model. Gender, enrollment year, and place of residence were significantly associated with participants' eHealth literacy skill (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Nursing students from rural residence and first-year students demonstrated relatively low access and use of the Internet. Gender, residence, and enrollment year were predictive variables of eHealth literacy among nursing students in this setting. Keywords: Nursing students, eHealth literacy, Internet use