Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jun 18, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 4, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
How Does Concurrent Media Exposure Affect Professional Identity: A Cross-sectional Study about 1087 Medical Students in Long-COVID
ABSTRACT
Background:
The shortage of health workforce has become increasingly serious in the long-COVID era, placing stress for the health care systems worldwide. The society is calling for the stabilization of medical workers. How to improve the professional identity of medical students and ensure steady supply of potential healthcare professionals have become urgent social problems the whole world currently facing.
Objective:
This study aims to explore the impact of media exposure in the long-COVID on medical students’ professional identity as well as the underlying mechanism.
Methods:
Building on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework, this study develops a theoretical model to illustrate how media exposure in the pandemic affects medical students’ professional identity via the provision of informational support and emotional support. A survey was conducted in a medical school in China, and 1087 valid responses were collected and analyzed using SmartPLS 4.0.
Results:
Consistent with our expectations, online news media exposure was positively associated with informational support (β=.163, p<.001) and emotional support (β=.084, p=.007). Also, social media exposure was positively associated with informational support (β=.122, p<.001) and emotional support (β=.235, p<.001). Thereafter, informational support (β=.228, p<.001) and emotional support (β=.344, p<.001) were positively associated with students’ belonging. Meanwhile, we found that informational support (β=.245, p<.001) and emotional support (β=.412, p<.001) positively impacted medical students’ professional commitment. In addition, a mediation test was also conducted. The results confirmed that informational support and emotional support partially mediated the effect of online news media but fully mediated the effect of social media on medical students’ belonging and professional commitment.
Conclusions:
Based on the SOR framework, this study finds that exposure to online news media and social media can enhance medical students’ belonging and professional commitment via informational support and emotional support. This study explores and expands the discussion on the role of media in the development of medical students’ professional identity, which is a beneficial attempt to solve complex public health crisis by using media governance in the network era. Clinical Trial: Investigation on media use and professional identity of medical students, Approved by Ethics Committee of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 2022-S009
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