Investigating the General Medical Students' Attitudes and Way of Using Smartphones to Learn Their Professional and Educational Issues

摘要

Introduction: Due to the popularity of smartphones and given the fact that smartphone-based learning methods are not widely used in the official curriculum of universities, this study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the general medical students' attitudes and way of using smartphones to learn the educational and professional issues. Materials and Methods: The population of this descriptive study included all of the general medical students. Sampling was performed by simple random sample. A total of 100 students completed these questionnaires. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire, which its validity and reliability have been confirmed in two studies among Australian and Iranian dentistry students. For the analysis of the data of the present study, frequency, mean, percentage, Mann-Whitney test and correlation coefficient Spearman in SPSS 22 software were used. Results: 57% of the students were female and 43% were male. The results of this study showed that medical students used their smartphone facilities for their educational and professional purposes. In this regard, the search of web pages related to the content of the curriculum ranked first (90%), followed by installation of medical-related applications on smartphones (89%). In addition, residential homes, different points of the faculty, and on the route such as in the bus, respectively, were the most commonly used places for students to use smartphones. The results also showed that as students use their phone for more general purposes, the student's desire to learn with the smartphone increases significantly (0.107). Additionally, as the age of people increases, their ability and desire to use it for general and educational purposes through smartphones is reduced significantly (-0.141). Discussion and Conclusion: Based on the results of this research, it seems necessary to use the capabilities of smartphones to learn medical and professional issues and to improve the medical profession, especially in educational and healthcare settings. It is also necessary to use the smartphones in official university curriculum. However, its disadvantages and threats should not be ignored.