Smart Phone Ownership and Usage amongst House Officers at the Federal Medical Centre Owerri, Nigeria

Background: Smart phones are becoming increasingly available and are now steadily becoming an essential tool for accessing clinical information, especially for younger health professionals and trainees. In Nigeria, House officers are first level medical practitioners who have just left medical school, and are beginning their professional life under supervision in designated health facilities prior to full registration by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.

Aim: This study sought to document the ownership and use to which smart phones were put by this group of young health professionals.

Methodology: This was a descriptive cross sectional study carried out between September and October 2018. The study instrument was a structured questionnaire which was administered to the study participants during the weekly departmental clinical meetings which is compulsory for all house officers. Descriptive analysis was done for continuous variables .Charts were used to analyze some discrete and continuous variables. Spearmann correlation coefficient was used to test the strength and direction of association among groups. Statistical significance was set at p-value <0.05.

Result: Sixty eight doctors participated in the study. Their ages ranged from 23 to 36 years with a mean of 28.2years. All had smart phones and 59( 86.8%) had Smart phone applications installed in their phones. WhatsApp was the most frequently used social media app but closely followed by Facebook and email apps. Twitter was the least utilized app. The commonest use to which smart phones were put was to check up drug doses and the least common use was to watch live matches and movies.

There was a significant positive correlation between average data use/month and number of WhatsApp group, number of Facebook group and time spent on phone. Number of WhatsApp group had a higher significant influence on monthly data use (rho 0.359, p value 0.001) than number of Facebook groups (rho 0.331, p value 0.016).

Conclusion: This study shows a very high ownership of smart phones which in addition to being used to access the social media is also used to access medical information required for learning and care of patients. It would be ideal though as a follow-up to document medical apps that have been found most useful by this group of young health professionals.