Study on Digital Literacy in Army Nurse Officers and its Effect on the Use of Digital Education Tools

Introduction:  Lifelong learning is a necessity for the modern nurse and can be facilitated by the widespread development and dissemination of New Technologies and the Internet.

Aim: The main purpose of the study is to investigate the level of Αrmy Nurses familiarity with the most well-known New World Wide Web (Web 2.0) tools, as well as to designate their attitudes and perceptions in relation to the use of these New Technologies during educational process. Individual objective is to examine the ability of  Army Nurses to use these tools to their continuing educational and professional development.

Material and Method: This is a cross-sectional research study. The referring population is the active Officer Nurses of Greece, in the first two months (Jan-Feb) of 2019. A sample of convenience was used.

Results: The population belong to generations X and Y. All of them have very good access to Internet and New Technologies. Differences were observed in the age of first use of the Internet, the way they use Technology and the different use of Social Media Networks. Although the vast majority of them have a positive attitude towards the use of the Internet and New Technologies in their lifelong learning, they were proved, according to this research, incapable of using them for this purpose. The only exception is Social Media.

Conclusions: Officer Nurses are a professional team with very good access to Technology and a positive attitude towards the Internet and New Technologies. However, their digital literacy needs to be improved in order to be able to take advantage of the capabilities provided by the tools of the New WorldWide Web in their continuing education and professional development.