Abstract
Background: Social media may offer certain advantages over more traditional educational tools as they can be accessed geographically and temporally in asynchronous manners as well as the majority of young health professionals prefer online media as their primary source of information. Objectives: To explore the frequency of use and belief of family medicine residents all over the Kingdom regarding the utilization of social media in learning. Subjects and methods: Cross-sectional study was carried out January to October 2019 in all Regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) that hosts a postgraduate training program. A sample of family medicine residents enrolled in all family Medicine residency programs of the Saudi Commission of Health Specialists (R1-R4) was chosen. Data were collected using an online questionnaire consists of four main parts: personal characteristics of the residents, details of SM utilization in education belief concerning the impact of utilization of SM on learning and barriers and problems faced in using SM in education. Results: The study included three hundred family medicine residents. Females represent 56.7% of them. The majority of them (93%) reported using social media in education. Almost one-third of the participants (36.6%) reported daily use of social media in education. The commonest used social media in education was YouTube (73%), followed by Google+ (32.3%) and Twitter (14.3%). Overall, the percentage of the belief regarding the impact of SM on learning scores among family medicine residents ranged between 36.2% and 100% with a mean +/- SD of 72.1 +/- 13 and median (IQR) of 74.5% 963.8-80.9%). More than half of the family medicine residents (51%) reported non-communication with their tutor via social network. Nearly one-third of the family medicine residents (36%) reported institutional non-usage of social media in education. Only 39.1% of family medicine residents were aware of the ethical guidance for using social media. Conclusion: The use of social media among family medicine residents in Saudi Arabia in medical education is very common, with no difference according to gender, residency level or place of the residency program. However, an apparent confusion was observed concerning the belief of family medicine residents towards the influence of utilizing social media in learning.