The relationship between online social support and trait anxiety in nurses and phubbing

Objective: In this study, it was conducted to examine the relationship between phubbing in nurses and online social support and trait anxiety and the factors affecting them. Method: The population of the research consists of nurses who actively use their social media accounts and work actively at the time of the research. Nurses were accessed by snowball method on online Whatsapp groups, Instagram and Facebook platforms through a digital survey between May and November 2021. As a data collection tool in this study; Individual descriptive characteristics form, generic scale of phubbing, online social support scale, trait anxiety inventory developed by the researcher in line with the literature were used. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis H tests were used in groups where the variances were not homogeneously distributed, and the t-test was used in the groups in which the variances were equally distributed. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the relationship between continuous variables and Spearman Rank correlation coefficient was calculated for categorical variables. In order to determine the variables affecting the overall sociothelite score, a backward selection method regression analysis was performed, and the VIF value was reported for multicollinearity. Results: The phubbing scores of the nurses participating in the study ranged from 15 to 98; online social support scores range from 0 to 150. The trait anxiety levels of the nurses participating in the study are at a moderate level. The majority of the participants (98.9%) have social media accounts, and among these social media accounts, whatsapp and instagram are the most preferred. In the study, it was observed that marital status, presence of WhatsApp groups with teammates, and being warned about the frequency of phone use from teammates affected phubbing (p<0.001). When the relationship between the scales is examined, there is a positive moderate correlation between the general phubbing score and the general online social support score; A weak positive correlation was found between the general phubbing score and the trait anxiety score. Conclusion: In this study, it was determined that social support from social media significantly affected the phubbing behavior of nurses and that trait anxiety mediated this relationship. In future studies, researchers can conduct extensive research on the effect of sociotelism on nurse-patient communication and care in occupational groups such as nursing where communication is important. This study is also important in terms of making significant contributions to the literature in our country, where there are only a limited number of studies on phubbing. Keywords: phubbing, online social support, trait anxiety, nurse