Nursing undergraduates' media competence in the context of health communication and its relationship to professionalism

AIMS: To investigate the association between professionalism and social media competence among Chinese mainland nursing undergraduates. DESIGN: This study employed a cross‐sectional descriptive correlation design. PARTICIPANTS: From June to July 2021, 797 nursing students from four nursing colleges in Jiangsu Province, China, were chosen using stratified cluster sampling. METHODS: The questionnaire included the Chinese version of the Nursing Professionalism Scale and the Social Media Competency Scale. The association between professionalism and social media competency was examined using Pearson's correlation analysis. RESULTS: The professionalism of nursing undergraduates (average scores:70.44 ± 8.82) was at a medium level. Social media self‐efficacy, performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and social influence (3.76 ± 0.75, 3.87 ± 0.60, 3.53 ± 0.69, 3.41 ± 0.76) were at a medium–high level, while social media experience and effort expectancy (3.03 ± 0.72, 2.60 ± 0.59) were at medium and low levels. Among nursing undergraduates, professionalism was related to social media competence, among which, professionalism was positively correlated with social media self‐efficacy (r = 0.40, p < 0.01), social media experience (r = 0.50, p < 0.01), performance expectancy (r = 0.34, p < 0.01), facilitating conditions (r = 0.41, p < 0.01), but negatively correlated with effort expectancy (r = −0.10, p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: The professionalism of nursing undergraduates is related to social media. The scores of social media self‐efficacy, social media experience, performance expectancy and facilitating conditions of nursing students with high professionalism were higher than those of nursing students with low professionalism. IMPACT: This study suggests that developing a course on health communication on social media can help nursing students improve their professionalism. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Participants completed a survey via the online survey platform Wenjuangxing.