Abstract

Objective: Computer and Internet literacy helps student nurses to achieve their learning goals. Increasing number of Saudi nurses is entering to work in the health care settings. It is vital that they have the abilities to use enhanced electronic means to find and utilize research findings throughout their career. There are limited numbers of nursing students’ information technology usage and no studies of Saudi nursing students’ computer and Internet utilization in their education were ring the literature review. The aim of this study is to investigate located du how student nurses use Computer and Internet for their studies in the College of Nursing, Jeddah. And the objectives are: To describe nursing students’ use of computer and Internet during their education in College of Nursing, Jeddah.

Materials and Methods: A relative frequency survey was conducted. The self-administered instrument’s validity was tested by using expert evaluations and by conducting a pilot study. A convenient sample of 100 female nursing students was used and response rate was 89%.

Results: The average age of the respondents was 22.3 years. Most of the students, 95.5% had their own computer and 68% had Internet connection at home. Only 41, 6% used Blackboard and 77.5% used e-mail in communication with their instructor. 80.9% of respondents searched nursing journals from the internet and only 12 students (n=89) used database(s) for information search. 82% of students found relevant nursing information for their studies from the Internet.

Conclusion: This study shows that nursing students are not using systematic ways to retrieve evidence based information from the databases. National Guard Health Affairs Universities have a good and relevant collection of databases for nursing students. Nursing students also need further training in using Blackboard, Word processor, Excel, and reference managers.