Professional WhatsApp use among health workers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Background: The use of social media and particularly WhatsApp for professional and job-related purposes is very popular among health professionals in Sub-Saharan African contexts and beyond. Regardless of a number of benefits, the platforms’ adoption in health professional settings brings about an array of challenges and its professional and sensible use requires health professionals to develop and apply a set of digital competencies. Despite these issues, very little is known about this topic. Objectives, approach and methods: The study’s main objectives were to explore challenges ingrained in health professionals’ use of social media and particularly WhatsApp (RQ1) and to identify competencies that professionals need to overcome these challenges and to use WhatsApp in a professional manner (RQ2). These were explored with a systematic literature review in the databases Pub Med databases and Ovid Medline, and through the selective analysis of existing guidelines. In addition to the more general analysis of health professionals’ social media use in the systematic literature review, RQ1 and 2 were also explored specifically with regard to the use of WhatsApp by nurses in the countries of Nigeria, Zambia and South Africa using six focus groups (n=29)....