Abstract

GUINEZ-CABRERA, Nataly  and  MANSILLA-OBANDO, Katherine. Use of WhatsApp in health workers in the Chilean vaccination process against the COVID-19 pandemic. Comuni@cción [online]. 2022, vol.13, n.1, pp.5-15.  Epub Mar 24, 2022. ISSN 2219-7168.  http://dx.doi.org/10.33595/2226-1478.13.1.582.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and confinement, the use of WhatsApp has increased. Health workers adopt this application to support their professional activities. However, it remains to be seen what influences the adoption and use of WhatsApp in these workers as a technological tool to support a vaccination process against COVID-19. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore the dimensions of the WhatsApp adoption and use model in the Chilean mass vaccination process against the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of health workers. To achieve this purpose, a qualitative methodology was used with ten semi-structured interviews with different health workers (nurses, TENS and nutritionist). The results obtained were analyzed with the “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” (UTAUT), identifying the dimensions of performance expectation, effort expectation, social influence, and facilitating conditions; and a new dimension that is privacy and security. This document brings new knowledge to the methodological discussions, since it is the first study that uses UTAUT to interpret the use of WhatsApp in a mass vaccination process in times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords : communication; COVID-19; pandemic; web 2.0 technologies; health workers; UTAUT; vaccines..

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