Social Networks in Education of Health Professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Role of Pubmed/Medline in Improvement of Medical Sciences

INTRODUCTION: Social network is a social structure made up of individuals and organizations that represent “nodes”, and they are associated with one or more types of interdependency; such as: friendship, common interests, work, knowledge, prestige and many other interests. Beginning with the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the Internet was a significant additional tool in the education of teenagers. Later, it takes more and more significant role in educating students and professionals. GOAL: The aim of this paper is to investigate, to what extent and how effectively the Internet is used today. In addition, more specifically, this paper will research the implications of the well-known social networks in education of students and health professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). MATERIAL AND METHODS: We compared the ratio of using Medline, as the largest biomedical data base system for spreading medical information, as basics for health education at biomedical faculties at five universities in B&H. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: According to data from the CRA (i.e. Communications Regulatory Agency) in B&H, in 2010, there were 522,364 internet access accounts, with about 2 million Internet users, representing about 52% of the total population. The Internet users’ preference is dominated by the users of fast broadband access (e.g. xDSL) with 42.8%, and elsewhere, still with dialup access, with 25.2%. The results showed that only 11.6% of professors use Facebook type of social network, 49.3% of them have a profile on BiomedExperts scientific social network and 79% have available articles in the largest biomedical literature database MEDLINE. Students are also frequent users of general social networks and educational clips from You Tube, which they prefer to utilize considerably more than the other types of professionals. Students rarely use the facilities of professional social networks, because they contain mainly data and information needed for further, postgraduate professional education. In our research, we analized cited published papers in the journal Medical Archives, the oldest medical journal in B&H (established in 1947) of randomly included 151 full and part time professors, authors from five medical faculties in B&H and B&H authors who currently work in the EU and USA.. ANOVA showed that there was no significant difference in the number of articles published between the Universities in Bosnia, but there was significant difference in the number of articles published on MEDLINE, between all faculties in B&H and a group of scientists who work around the world. Students’ tests showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the average number of papers published on Medline, between groups of part-time and full time professors. However, there were no statistically significant differences, between the professors for preclinical and clinical subjects. CONCLUSION: In B&H there are decent conditions for the use of online social networks in the education of health professionals. While students enthusiastically embraced these opportunities, this is not so much a case with health care professionals in practice; while scientific health care workers have not shown greater interest in the use of social networks, both for purposes of scientific research and in terms of self-education and training of students. There is much more use of the advantages offered by online social networks, both in education and in support of the scientific research.