Internet use and "English Language Burden": The importance of academic education in nursing for nonnative speakers of English” (Poster)

Background: 80% of all current web pages are written in English. English is the international language of all sciences and the best medical and nursing journals. However, most of the world population does not speak English as a native language, nor as a second language, a situation that poses a challenge for many nonnative English speaking healthcare professionals who wish to reach the best available evidence and guidelines and submit scholarly articles to scientific magazines. In the few studies on nurses' usage of information and communication technologies (ICT), the common findings are that nurses use the Internet less often than physicians; and that nurses, especially older ones, prefer personal experience and communication with colleagues and patients rather than turning to on-line resources of information. None of these studies has referred to the possibility that English, spoken as a foreign language, could be a barrier that is responsible, at least partly, for the "English Language Burden" for readers and writers among healthcare professionals. Aims: 1. Compile a brief measure of basic Internet usage for professional purposes. 2. Study whether the level of nursing education affects Internet usage for professional purposes among nurses. 3. To explore the differences between Internet usage (sending e-mails, searching for professional information and searching by using key-words) in native language (Hebrew) and in a foreign language )English). Methods: 203 hospital nurses completed a self-report questionnaire. 54% were Bachelor or Masters' degree prepared nurses. All participants spoke Hebrew as their first or second language, and English as a foreign language. All had ample and continuous exposure to English throughout their education. The questionnaire assessed: frequency, difficulty and self-efficacy of Internet usage in two languages, Hebrew and English. Results: For both frequency and difficulty parameters of Internet usage, educational differences were bigger than language differences. For both languages, nurses without academic degrees reported significantly lower levels of Internet usage and self-efficacy, but higher level of difficulty, compared with degree prepared nurses (for all comparisons, p