Nurses' attitudes toward computer use in healthcare and computer literacy

Objective. The aim of study was to assess nurse attitudes to computers use in healthcare and to determine if there is a relationship between the attitudes, socio-demographic variables and computers literacy. Methods. Descriptive, analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in the two university hospitals, on a sample of 203 nurses. Instruments used in this research included: The Pretest for Attitudes Towards Computers in Healthcare Assessment Scale v. 3, the computer literacy questionnaire along with socio-demographic questionnaire. Results. The internal reliability of The Pretest for Attitudes Towards Computers in Healthcare Assessment Scale was acceptable (α = 0.92) and the overall score (M = 63.9 out of maximum 100) indicated moderately positive nurse attitudes toward the use of the computers in healthcare. According to the classification categories of scale, 46.3% of nurses were in realistic group, and no nurses with cyberphobia characteristics. Inferential statistics methods revealed a significance difference in attitudes in respect to education, the place of use of computer and duration of computer use (p<0.05). The mean computer knowledge score including all the nurses was 6.3 ± 1.7 out of maximum 10 indicated the intermediate knowledge level. The positive correlation was calculated between computer literacy and attitudes toward utilization of computers in healthcare. Discussion. The findings of this study showed positive nurse attitudes toward computers in healthcare, providing a good basis for the introduction of technological developments, which represents a vital process for improving and restructuring healthcare. Still, it is necessary to support nurses to expand their computer skills.