Social media and physicians: Exploring the benefits and challenges

Abstract

Healthcare professionals' use of social media platforms, such as blogs, wikis, and social networking web sites has grown considerably in recent years. However, few studies have explored the perspectives and experiences of physicians in adopting social media in healthcare. This article aims to identify the potential benefits and challenges of adopting social media by physicians and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a survey conducted with physicians. A qualitative survey design was employed to achieve the research goal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 physicians from around the world who were active users of social media. The data were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach. The study revealed six main reasons and six major challenges for physicians adopting social media. The main reasons to join social media were as follows: staying connected with colleagues, reaching out and networking with the wider community, sharing knowledge, engaging in continued medical education, benchmarking, and branding. The main challenges of adopting social media by physicians were also as follows: maintaining confidentiality, lack of active participation, finding time, lack of trust, workplace acceptance and support, and information anarchy. By revealing the main benefits as well as the challenges of adopting social media by physicians, the study provides an opportunity for healthcare 3 professionals to better understand the scope and impact of social media in healthcare, and assists them to adopt and harness social media effectively, and maximize the benefits for the specific needs of the clinical community.

Dermatopathology and Social Media

“…Social media in medicine has been described as underutilized and unregulated. 44 Limitations due to the lack of content regulation and validity are legitimate. Internet content is a universal struggle in the medical community.…”

Information encountering on social media and tacit knowledge sharing

“…Although the adoption of social media by physicians has increased considerably in recent years, little has been done to investigate their perspectives and experiences of using these tools [41].…”

“…Information anarchy is one of the main challenges of online information, particularly if it is published on social media [41]. Participants viewed seeking information individually and sieving relevant from irrelevant information as a quite time consuming effort.…”

¿Cómo afectan los medios sociales a la confidencialidad de los pacientes? Revisión de los potenciales problemas y recomendaciones

“…En un estudio realizado por Panahi et al, en el que se tuvo en cuenta la opinión de los facultativos, se puso de manifiesto que, aunque reconocían que la comunicación y el aprendizaje cara a cara en tiempo real eran insustituibles, resultaba positivo participar en las redes sociales para mantenerse al día en cuanto a formación, así como intercambiar conocimientos o establecer contacto con otros compañeros en la distancia. Por otra parte, los principales retos que les planteaba el uso de tales tecnologías estaban relacionados con la confidencialidad de los pacientes, entre otros, como la falta de participación activa o incluso de tiempo para dicha actividad (26). Siguiendo esta línea, se describió un caso en que el paciente no podía facilitar información sobre su patología debido a su situación clínica, y el equipo médico llegó a utilizar datos personales procedentes de un perfil de Facebook para prestarle atención médica (27).…”