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Social media have played an increasing role in medicine with potential applications for both physicians and patients. This trend has also impacted clinical and surgical practice in ophthalmology in a wide range of subspecialties to promote scientific research findings, provide further tools for teaching, and ease communication between ophthalmologists across the globe improving patient care. However, social media have certain limitations that need to be overcome to ensure their reliability and quality for physicians and patients. This article provides a review of the current applications and pitfalls of social media in ophthalmology.
Social media have played an increasing role in medicine with potential applications for both physicians and patients. This trend has also impacted clinical and surgical practice in ophthalmology in a wide range of subspecialties to promote scientific research findings, provide further tools for teaching, and ease communication between ophthalmologists across the globe improving patient care. However, social media have certain limitations that need to be overcome to ensure their reliability and quality for physicians and patients. This article provides a review of the current applications and pitfalls of social media in ophthalmology.
Many physicians consider social media a good tool for building their brands and attracting patients. However, limited data exist on patients’ perceptions of the value of social media in ophthalmology. Therefore, our objective was to examine how social media influences patients when choosing an ophthalmologist among social media users, and people’s behaviors toward ophthalmologists’ social media accounts. This was a cross-sectional study including 1086 participants. Males represented 77.3% of the sample. The majority of the participants (71.3%) were aged between 25 and 54 years. Regarding social media sites frequently checked, Twitter ranked first (75.3%), followed by Snapchat (52.8%) and YouTube (48.7%). The majority (92.3%) used social media sites at all times of the day. Concerning the importance of ophthalmologists’ social media sites, around 36.3% considered it either very or extremely important. As regards the important factors about an ophthalmologist’s social media site from participants’ perspectives, medical information written by the ophthalmologist (45.5%) and recommendations by friends (45.4%) were the most common reasons. Around 21% of females, compared to 16.8% of males, perceived the ophthalmologists’ social media sites as extremely important, p = 0.041. A quarter of participants aged between 18 and 24 years, compared to only 5.5% of those aged 65 and above, perceived the ophthalmologists’ social media sites as extremely important, p = 0.018. In conclusion, a considerable proportion of the people who used social media described ophthalmologists’ social media sites as very/extremely important in their choice of an ophthalmologist.
Purpose: This study aims to determine the content and intent of posts published under popular ophthalmology hashtags and to determine whether these posts were educational for ophthalmologists. Methods: A web-based, cross-sectional study design was used to evaluate the top public posts of five popular hashtags on three consecutive days by two ophthalmology specialists. The first 100 relevant English posts of each hashtag were studied. Selected hashtags were #Ophthalmology, #ophthalmosurgery, #ophthalmologyresident, #ophthalmologist, and #ophthalmicphotography. Posts were classified according to the type of post, post author, post intent, and whether the post was educational. Posts deemed educational were then categorized separately using the same classification system as above to determine whether there were defining characteristics of educational posts. Results: One thousand posts were recorded and analyzed and a total of 500 posts were included in the study. The majority of posts 79.8% ( n = 399), were by medical doctors with 95% ( n = 379) being ophthalmology specialists. Sixty-three percent of posts ( n = 315) were deemed educational, 25% promotional ( n = 127), and 12% ( n = 58) were entertainment posts. Medical retina ( n = 119) and anterior segment ( n = 90) were the most common subspecialties explored. #ophthalmicphotography ( P = 0.001) was the hashtag with the highest number of educational posts ( n = 91). The least educational hashtag was #ophthalmologist with only 44% of posts ( n = 44) that were deemed to be educational. One hundred percent of glaucoma posts ( n = 19), 98% of cornea posts ( n = 41), and 99% of medical retina posts ( n = 118) were found to be educational which was significantly more educational than the other topics posted ( P ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: Ophthalmologists are the main authors of posts in popular ophthalmology hashtags. The majority of posts were educational posts with promotional posts being the second most common intent. The authors conclude that while Instagram is a possible source of ancillary education for the visual specialty of ophthalmology, careful selection of hashtags and post authors are needed for maximum benefit.
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