Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, Dongguk University. ohwo@dongguk.ac.kr
Abstract
PURPOSE: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey to identify school nurses' knowledge, educational needs and providing education about Internet addiction.
METHOD: A total of 198 school nurses working in schools located in Gyunggi Province and the cities of Ulsan, Daegu, and Pohang participated in the study. A self-report scale was used to collect data. It included 53 items measuring school nurses' knowledge, their educational needs and performing related to Internet addiction.
RESULTS: The mean score for knowledge of Internet addiction was 13.12 (SD=3.13), indicating a moderate level of knowledge. The highest frequency, 24.7% of the school nurses agreed that the computer teacher is the appropriate person to do educate on Internet addiction, followed by the school nurse with another teacher (24.2%). Only 40.4% of the nurses had any experience in providing students with education about Internet addiction. The main reason for not providing education about Internet addiction was that there was no time (57.6%). Education was reported most frequently as being provided by the class teacher (36.3%), followed by school nurse (31.3%).
CONCLUSIONS: It is important to expand the role of school nurses in preventing and responding to Internet addiction and to develop training programs designed to further develop their abilities in teaching and counseling.