Psychological Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and eHealth Literacy Among Nursing Students in the United States and Türkiye, 2022.

OBJECTIVES

In health emergencies such as pandemics, nurses are on the front lines, thus increasing their risk of psychological distress. The mental health of nursing students may also deteriorate as a result of changes in learning and clinical practice environments. We measured the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and electronic health (eHealth) literacy among nursing students and identified associated factors.

METHODS

We used a cross-sectional design to analyze students studying at 2 nursing schools in the United States and Türkiye (N = 887 nursing students). We used the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (range, 7-35) and the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (range, 5-20) to measure fear and anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we used the Electronic Health Literacy Scale (range, 8-40) to measure eHealth literacy among students from April through June 2022. We conducted 1-way multivariate analysis of variance (F) to examine the relationships among variables, with P ≤ .05 considered as significant.

RESULTS

Students had mean scores of 30.7 for eHealth literacy, 14.1 for Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and 6.2 for Coronavirus Anxiety Scale. Scores for eHealth literacy varied according to the students' school, academic level, and employment but were generally high. Sex (Wilks λ = 0.952; F = 14.787; P < .001) and the frequency of following news related to COVID-19 (Wilks λ = 0.927; F = 11.424; P < .001) influenced COVID-19-related fear and anxiety. eHealth literacy and fear of COVID-19 differed significantly by students' vaccine dose (λ = 0.983; F = 5.081; P = .002).

CONCLUSIONS

Increasing the level of eHealth literacy can contribute to reducing the psychological effects of health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, among nursing students.