Perceptions of who is in the Healthcare Team? A Content Analysis of Social Media Posts during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Social media posts can be used to explore public perceptions of interprofessional teams and healthcare professionals. The aim of this study was to use social listening technique to explore unfiltered public perceptions of the professionals involved in healthcare teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a naturalistic online setting, and to elaborate on the emotional reactions in response to an online social media post. A cross-sectional retrospective review of comments on a specific social media post was conducted between 15 March and 28 April 2020 using summative content analysis. One image that was widely circulated on social media platforms with two questions: ‘Who society thinks works at hospital? versus who really works at hospitals?’ was selected. Three platforms were searched, Facebook®, Twitter®, and LinkedIn®. Only publicly available posts were included. Out of the initial 40 posts identified, 21 posts, which had 1759 comments, were analysed and 1576 were included for coding. Of the emerging nine themes, perceptions of who is in the team was the largest (40.5%, n = 639), followed by agreement (23.1%, n = 364) and feeling excluded (16.2%, n = 255). Of emotional expressions, 42.1% were positive and 57.9% negative. The most frequent emotions were frustration (54.4%, n = 857) followed by gratitude (16.3%, n = 257) and relief (15.9%, n = 250). The post brought considerable attention to the role of the interprofessional team and generated many feelings of frustration and exclusion. For this reason, the response to this social media post is very important and not to be overlooked. Healthcare professionals need to work together to strengthen their presence as an interprofessional team, united to deliver safe effective quality care for patients. The current COVID-19 pandemic and the media attention should be taken as an opportunity by the interprofessional community to work together to combat negative media stereotypes. Further research is warranted on public perceptions of the healthcare team.

Nurses’ use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic—A scoping review

“…The studies' research areas and aims consisted of evaluations of risk perception, attitudes, knowledge and preparedness related to COVID-19 [47,49,[51][52][53][54][55][56] and explorations of social media posts [48,50], including policies, and both social media and traditional printed news media and magazines [57].…”

“…Nine out of eleven studies were descriptive cross-sectional surveys (n = 9; seven online, one paper-based, one unclear). A majority targeted healthcare professionals (n = 9) and/or media content such as social media posts (n = 3) [48,50,57], and policy documents and news coverage (n = 1) [57]. Data was collected through the means of validated and non-validated questionnaires, the sampling of (social) media posts and policies, and interviews.…”

“…the samples and platforms (e.g. social media posts) in the studies consisted of healthcare professionals including nurses, physicians, paramedical staff, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and other clinical and administrative staff from a variety of healthcare related contexts [47,49,[51][52][53][54][55][56], members of the general public [53], social media posts from platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit and Facebook [48,50,57], and policies and media (social media, traditional media) [57].…”

“…Social media did not come through as the major object of study in most studies. Only one article used social media in the title [48]. Only one article had social media as one out of several keywords [48] and another had 'communications media' as a keyword [50].…”

“…Only one article used social media in the title [48]. Only one article had social media as one out of several keywords [48] and another had 'communications media' as a keyword [50]. All articles mention social media in their abstracts, either in terms of a distribution channel, social media as data collection method or as an object of study (a variable), e.g.…”