Pattern of Internet Use by Iranian Nursing Students. Facilitators and Barriers

To evaluate the pattern of internet use and factors that facilitate or dissuade its use among nursing students from a university in Urmia, Iran.

A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted with 162 nursing students selected through simple random sampling.

The findings indicated that 49.1% of the students used the internet from 15 to 60 min per day. The principal use of the internet was to search for scientific content in the Web. Factors that facilitated internet use were "ease of use" and "Access to experts to solve problems and answer questions", while the dissuasive factors were "lack of concentration", "cost of internet services", and preference for information provided by professors or available directly in textbooks. Internet use by the students was related with the use of this tool in classroom activities and with English fluency.

Students have an internet use pattern aimed at self-study that should be strengthened with knowledge of English, assignments online, familiarization with the use of electronic databases, and other strategies to motivate them to use this technology with greater frequency.