Social Media: A Method to Recruit Students into Undergraduate Nursing Programmes

Abstract

Alternative methods to recruit students into the nursing profession need to be explored and utilised. Social media has the potential to be a very potent recruitment aid. The study seeks to describe and explore some of the social media that could be utilised to recruit students for the nursing profession. A qualitative study (explorative and descriptive in nature), using a literature review and electronic survey-questionnaires was used to elicit suggestions from authors and nurse educators on student recruitment via social media. Quantitative data validation was performed. The study made use of an online tool to reach national and international lecturers. Nurse educators from nursing education institutions (NEI) in South Africa as well as nurse educators from international NEIs constitute the study participants. Result shows that contemporary literature supports the use of social media in student recruitment practices. Most of the participating nurse educators were also making use of their own NEI’s website while a limited number of nurse educators make use of alternative social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn.