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Journal of Medical Education

Abstract

Background: By adopting a social network perspective, we estimated the impact of the extent of information dissemination and exchange on the emotions and behaviors of medical university students during the COVID-19 epidemic. Methods: Students from a medical university in southern Taiwan were selected through stratified sampling. From October 5 to October 11, 2020, a survey was conducted using a self-developed COVID-19 Response Assessment Scale. A total of 1,162 valid responses were collected. Results: Higher frequencies of information acquisition from social networks or news media and information exchange with others in social networks were associated with higher levels of worries regarding potential infection. Neither anxiety nor stress was significantly correlated with infection prevention behaviors; rather, higher levels of worries regarding potential infection were correlated with higher levels of efforts in infection prevention. Conclusions: The cross-sectional design cannot rule out that the correlation between variables may be a bidirectional causal relationship, but the results show the more sufficient and transparent information about infectious diseases in the social networks of medical students, the more worried they are about being infected, thereby effectively improving their infection prevention behavior. This not only means that in medical education, social networks with rich information are of great significance for medical students to obtain relevant knowledge, it also means that in epidemic prevention measures, transparent and open information and news trusted by the public can effectively delay the spread of infectious diseases or reduce harm.

First Page

64

Last Page

76

DOI

10.6145/jme.202506_29(2).0002

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