N. Nagarajan1, B. J. Smart2, M. Dredze3, J. L. Lee5, J. Taylor1, J. A. Myers2, E. B. Schneider1, Z. D. Berger4, J. K. Canner1 1Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine,Department Of Surgery,Baltimore, MD, USA 2Rush University Medical Center,Department of Surgery,Chicago, IL, USA 3Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine,Department Of Computer Science,Baltimore, MD, USA 4Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine,Department Of General Internal Medicine,Baltimore, MD, USA 5Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Of Public Health,Baltimore, MD, USA
Introduction:
Providers, patients and advocates are increasing using social networking sites likes Twitter to disseminate information and to aid in healthcare decision-making. In surgery, despite anecdotes about enthusiastic adoption by providers, there is a lack of robust qualitative and quantitate data on the utilization of Twitter for professional use. Therefore, this study aims to identify surgical providers on Twitter and to analyze their usage patterns.
Methods:
Individual tweets on surgical topics were pulled from Twitter from March 27th to April 27th, 2015 using a comprehensive list of surgery-related hashtags. Following this, the unique profiles of users who generated these tweets were identified. Further, key word matching was used to isolate those who self-identified (in profile ID/screen name/biography) as being involved in a surgical field. The Twitter profiles of these selected ‘surgical providers’ were analyzed to extract information on pre-determined themes. Data was extracted on multiple qualitative and quantitative fields, including: sex, location, user-type, affiliation, surgical specialty, multimedia use, followers/following, number of tweets, list membership and time on twitter. Standard descriptive statistical analyses were used to summarize the findings.
Results:
A total of 17,783 surgery-related tweets were pulled in the study period from 7,713 unique users. Following this, 726 profiles (9.4%) were identified as ‘surgical providers’. The cohort had a heterogeneous mix of user-type (surgeons/students/physicians/researchers/institutions) with varied affiliations (academic/community/private/non-profit/government) and specialties (general surgery/breast surgery/plastic surgery/orthopedics/surgical oncology/surgical health systems). The median time on twitter for profiles in this cohort was 40.7 months and ranged from 3 months to 8.5 years. Overall, a majority of the users were from North America (58.3%), followed by Europe (21.2%) and Asia (12.0%). This cohort had cumulatively tweeted 1,814,017 times; the median number of tweets per user was 625, with users tweeting as few as 8 and as many as 112,648 times. The median number of followers for a profile (334 [range: 7-142,580]) was similar to the number that they themselves followed (323 [range: 3-66,731]). Users were also members of a number of lists (median 11 [range: 0-3,672]) that are created based on common interests and topics that they tweet on.
Conclusion:
Surgical providers on Twitter come from varied affiliations/specialties but are predominantly from developed countries in North America and Europe. Most profiles (71.1%) were created in the last 5 years, which may point to a growing understanding of the utility of this interface for building professional networks as well as for effective patient education. More in-depth content and network analyses are necessary to develop strategies for using social media to improve knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration between surgical providers, patients and patient advocates.