Professional online engagement: A concept analysis informing nursing practice and education

• Online engagement is a growing phenomenon among professionals across various fields, providing opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, collaboration, and career development, yet its conceptual clarity, defining attributes, and practical applications, particularly in fields like nursing, remain insufficiently explored in existing literature. • This paper highlights the conceptual gaps in existing literature and conducts a detailed concept analysis of online engagement for professionals, defining it as the active participation and interaction of individuals within digital platforms or communities relevant to their professional fields, and identifying five key attributes—active participation, interaction, knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration—while also examining its antecedents and consequences. • The clarified concept of online professional engagement offers practical guidance for developing targeted strategies to enhance digital collaboration, networking, and knowledge exchange, enabling nurses to leverage digital tools for professional development, interprofessional collaboration, and improved patient care in professional and educational settings. Despite growing research on online learning, online professional engagement remains underdefined. Clarifying the factors that influence this concept and identifying its core attributes, antecedents, and consequences are essential to enhancing digital collaboration, networking, and knowledge exchange, to inform future engagement strategies. A concept analysis was conducted using Walker and Avant’s structured method for concept clarification. A comprehensive literature search was performed across CINAHL, PubMed, and ERIC databases, covering publications from 1999 to 2024. Inclusion criteria limited results to peer-reviewed, full-text articles in English, yielding 11 relevant studies. Walker and Avant’s eight-step concept analysis approach was employed to identify and examine key characteristics and contextual factors of online professional engagement. Five defining attributes were identified: active participation, interaction, knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration. Online professional engagement is defined as the active participation and interaction of individuals within digital platforms or communities relevant to their professional fields, encompassing various activities aimed at connecting, sharing knowledge, collaborating, and building relationships with experts, peers, and stakeholders through online channels.