The Experience Of Nurse Educators On The Utilization Of WeChat In The Internship:a Qualitative Study

Objective:This study aimed to insights the nurse educators’ experience and perspective with regard to using WeChat in the process of clinical nursing education, to puts forward some targeted suggestions through the interviews of nurse educators and to be reference for the implementation of more widely used in the field of nursing education in China in the future.Methods:This is a qualitative phenomenology study, semi-structured interviews was utilized to explore views of purposive sample of 16 nurse educators who have rich experience in clinical teaching in Zhejiang, mainland China. Transcripts were entered intoNVivo. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data for significant statements and phrases that in turn were organized into themes and sub-themes. Using the original data, the participants’ test method and code consistency check method, three methods were used to verify the data.Results:The analysis yielded three main themes, which are presented below:the perspective of using WeChat in clinical nursing education; the application experiencing of using WeChat in clinical nurse education; the gain in using WeChat in clinical nursing education; The barriers in using WeChat in clinical nursing education.Between October 2014 and February 2015,16 participants were interviewed.10 of all 16 interviewers (62.5%) have used WeChat in their clinical nursing education with positive impact.2 interviewers (12.5%) have tried but gave up as a variety of reasons. Another 4 interviewers (25%) have not tried WeChat yet but they have joined the WeChat group handled by the head nurse or added some of clinical nursing intern students as friends on the WeChat. After repeated reading, analyzed, reflected,classified and refined on the interview data, it came the final four results and eleven subjects,listed below:1. The perspective of using WeChat in the process of clinical nursing education: ① "pretty good" (Popular and Habituated of using WeChat, Economy and powerful function of WeChat); ② "General" or "not good enough" (Age and Acceptance of difference, Inappropriade number and rotation of the students, Dis-benefits to Access to Network and Lack of Hardware, A lot other communication tools can be chosen in addition to WeChat)2. The application experiencing of using WeChat in clinical nurse education: ① Group Chat (Way to join talk in the group, Content and Frequency Of Group Chat); ②WeChat Moments (Shared Contents, Shared Reason); ③Subscriptions (Followed Contents, Adding Subscriptions channel)3. The gain of using WeChat in clinical nurse education: ①Help to improve the motion and relationship between clinical nursing mentors and intern students; ②Help trainees to establish team concepts, increase nursing teachers team cohesion; ③Help to achieve teaching innovation, increase the teaching quality of feedback channels.4. The barriers in using WeChat in clinical nursing education: ①Bad effect and instantaneity when notice released in WeChat; ②Difficulty of management for the large member; ③Over information and uneven level.Conclusion:The WeChat is high speed development and widespread applications nowadays in China Zhejiang Province. In accordance with whether the interviewees choose or not to use WeChat in clinical nursing education, especially the description of the reasons, and the practical situation and difficulty in the WeChat application, it is not difficult to infer that if we want to promoting the WeChat application better, first of all, making the WeChat application basics knowledges universal among the mentors; secondly, it is necessary to strengthen the standardized management of WeChat in clinical nursing education; and finally, in order to inspire the interns’ learning motivation and initiative, innovative teaching concept should be bringing in and adopted to combine with the application of WeChat.