WhatsApp

ABSTRACT Medical education has its core values of confidentiality and formal conduct while social media involved sharing and openness, connection which seems to be contradictory for medical professionalism. Main purpose of this study was to explore the students' perception, attitudes and barriers about the professional use of social media and to assess the experiences of undergraduate on the improvement of clinical teaching through the incorporation of social media applications. A cross sectional survey based study was carried out at Oman Medical College. All final year students consented to participate were included in the study. Data was collected on self-administered questionnaire in which core elements were divided – demographics, type and frequencies of different social media usage, student’s perception about WhatsApp utilization and barriers of not using social media. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0). Data were expressed in frequencies, mean and percentages. A total of 76 participants were enrolled in which 5 (6.6%) were male and 71 (93.4%) were aged between 20-25 years of age. Among all 57 (75%) were Omani nationals and almost all (98.7%) participants used social media of which 35 (46.1%) were android, 29 (38.2%) IOS, and 12 (15.8%) were other operating system users. All participants daily spend some time on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. In contrast, responses of all participants’ indicated that they never make use of Wiki, Chat On and hangout. More than half of the study participants believed that lack of internet access is one the main barrier of non-utilization of social media. Medical students prefer online media for communication and medical information along with usage of WhatsApp in medical education and learning is helpful for improving and enhancing the interactive learning. The students’ response emphasizes positive response and experiences of their learning and discussions provided an effective space for integrated small group clinical teaching and learning. Keywords: Social media, medical education, WhatsApp, clinical teaching, learning