Social Media Use and Related Factors of Patients in Sub-district Health Promoting Hospitals, Wangmoung District, Saraburi Province

Abstract

Currently, the use of social media over the world is disruptive diffusion. This new media is popular for health promotion too. The purpose of this cross-sectional survey research was to find the influencing factors of social media use among hypertensive and/or diabetes mellitus patients in Sub-district Health Promoting Hospitals, Wangmoung District, Saraburi Province. Participants were included patients in rural area during January to March 2018, totally 156 persons. Participants were recruited through a multi-stage systematic random sampling. Data were collected through interview forms and analyzed by frequency distribution, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Chi-square test, and binary logistic regression analysis. The level of statistical significance was set as 0.05. The findings were 23 (12.12%) of patients, who use social media, all of them use LINE. The factors significantly correlated with social media use (p <0.05) were gender, occupation, education level, age group, income sufficiency of income, self-care knowledge and self-care behaviors. The suggestion was the health promotion or health education for hypertensive and/or diabetes mellitus patients in rural area should be flexible not only social media use, but also conventional and face to face program.