Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Committee Chair

Quanza Mooring

Abstract

This study sought to explore relationships between nurse stress, social media use, and emotional wellbeing. Social media being such a popular trend, has been studied a lot in recent years to determine impacts on health. Nurses are also impacted by this societal trend and research has not focused on this particular group to see how it impacts their emotional wellbeing. The framework for this research was Cognitive-Relational Theory and Margaret Newman’s Theory of Expanding Consciousness. A review of literature was performed to gather data on direct care nurse stress, social media use, coping mechanisms, quality of life, and strategies for improvement. A voluntary survey was sent out through the local nurses’ organizational newsletter with participation from 55 direct care nurses. Relationships with overall work related stress and total quality of life scores were found, but no relationship was found between the total group’s social media use and work related stress scores. A slight relationship was found between the 18-29 year old group social media use and work related stress score, p=0.06, with lower rates of work related stress correlating with increased use of social media. There was no significance, p=0.78, in the relationship between social media use and emotional wellbeing. Mean scores on two of the social wellbeing questions on the MHC-SF indicate a need for further investigation into impacts that social media has on the way nurses perceive society and how this impacts the care they provide to their patients. There were several limitations of the study, and further investigation is indicated, as results contradict results from other findings in the general population.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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