A scoping review of WeChat to facilitate professional healthcare education in Mainland China

摘要

Aim: WeChat is the most popular social media platform in mainland China, with over 1 billionactive users. Although social media is widely used in professional healthcare education inwestern countries, research on WeChat-based education in healthcare in mainland China isdisparate and not systematic. The current study seeks to address this gap.Method: A scoping review was conducted to systematically describe studies of WeChat use inprofessional healthcare education. A comprehensive search involving three internationaldatabases in English and Chinese literature was conducted in April 2019. Articles wereretained in this study if they were original studies that used WeChat as a tool to facilitatehealthcare education in mainland China.Results: 25 studies met the inclusion criteria and the majority of studies were either experi-mental or quasi-experimental. WeChat was used in both university settings and hospitalsettings. Hybrid education–which integrates WeChat education and face-to-face education–was more common in university settings, whereas hospitals used a combination of hybrid andWeChat-only strategies. Significant heterogeneity was observed regarding the type ofaccounts and methods for delivering content and facilitating online conversations.A majority of studies found positive outcomes with WeChat education.Conclusions: This scoping review addressed a large gap in knowledge about the usage ofWeChat in professional healthcare education. Of the existing studies identified, we observedconsiderable promise for future practice. We provide additional suggestions for conductingfuture research involving patients and other helping professionals in healthcare education toexpand the usage of WeChat.