Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2021.62.56 9
Social media use habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism among medicine and dental medicine students: a quantitative crosssectional study
Joško Viskić
; Department of Fixed Prosthodontics, School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Dražen Jokić
; Department of Orthodontics, School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Marko Marelić
orcid.org/0000-0003-2596-3359
; Department of Medical Sociology and Health Economics, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
Lovela Machala Poplašen
orcid.org/0000-0002-1375-6419
; Andrija Stampar Library, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
Danko Relić
; Department of Medical Statistics, Epidemiology and Medical Informatics, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
Kristijan Sedak
orcid.org/0000-0002-6755-0176
; Department of Communication Sciences, Catholic University of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Tea Vukušić Rukavina
orcid.org/0000-0002-6466-9024
; Department of Medical Sociology and Health Economics, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Aim To describe and compare social media (SM) use hab
-
its, and attitudes of medical and dental students toward
e-professionalism and to determine their opinion on po
-
tentially unprofessional behavior and posts.
Methods In this quantitative cross-sectional question
-
naire study, students of the University of Zagreb School of
Medicine and those of the School of Dental Medicine com
-
pleted a survey-specific questionnaire on the use of SM,
SM habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism.
Results Of the 714 collected questionnaires, we analyzed
698 (411 from medical and 287 from dental students). The
most commonly used SM were Facebook (99%) and Ins
-
tagram (80.7%). Unprofessional content was recognized
by both groups. Medical students significantly more fre
-
quently considered the posts containing patient pho
-
tos (61% vs 89.8%;
P
<0.001), describing interaction with
a patient not revealing any personal identifiable informa
-
tion (23% vs 41.8%;
P
<0.001), and containing critical com
-
ments about faculty (53% vs 39.7%;
P
=0.001) to be un
-
professional. Dental medicine students were significantly
more open to communication through SM (39.7% vs
16.3%;
P
<0.001), more often reported that they would ac
-
cept (41.5% vs 12.2%;
P
<0.001), and had accepted (28.2%
vs 5.6%;
P
<0.001) friend requests/follows/tracks from pa
-
tients, and sent friend requests/follows/tracks to their pa
-
tients (5.2% vs 1.2%;
P
=0.002).
Conclusion Both groups were highly aware of e-profes
-
sionalism. Dental students were more desensitized to vi
-
sual representations of patients, and more prone to SM in
-
teractions with patients, which might expose them to the
risk of unprofessional behavior.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
278867
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2021.
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