Dataset Information

Professional use of social media by pharmacists.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A recent trend among health care professionals is the use of social media for professional purposes. These rapidly expanding media allow for timely and efficient access to health information, but they also carry the potential for increased liability. There is a paucity of research detailing how health care professionals, specifically pharmacists, use social media.

Objective

To characterize the use of social media by pharmacists in the Canadian province of Alberta and to identify independent determinants of and perceived barriers to using social media for professional purposes.

Methods

Data for this mixed-methods study were collected by an online survey in March and April 2014. Alberta pharmacists were invited to participate via e-mail distributed by 2 professional organizations.

Results

The survey had 273 respondents. Of these, 226 (82.8%) stated that they had a social media account for either personal or professional purposes, and 138 (61.1%) of these reported using social media for professional purposes, although most respondents used social media predominantly for personal reasons. The most commonly reported social media applications were Facebook and Twitter, accessed primarily via smartphones. Of the 273 respondents, 206 (75.5%) had a Facebook account, and 101 (49.0%) of these used Facebook to some extent for professional purposes. Twitter users (104 [38.1%] of respondents) had a higher rate of professional utilization (57/104 [54.8%]). The most commonly identified barrier to using social media for professional purposes was concern over liability. Positive predictors of use of social media for professional purposes included younger age and fewer years of professional experience. Participants perceived the most beneficial aspect of social media (in professional terms) as connecting with pharmacist colleagues.

Conclusion

More than 80% of pharmacists in Alberta reported that they had a social media account, and over half of them reported using their accounts for professional purposes. Although Facebook had a higher reported rate of utilization in general, a greater proportion of respondents reported using Twitter for professional purposes. Individuals and organizations seeking to expand their professional social media presence should focus on Twitter.

SUBMITTER: Barry AR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4350495 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Professional use of social media by pharmacists.

Barry Arden R AR Pearson Glen J GJ

The Canadian journal of hospital pharmacy 20150101 1

<h4>Background</h4>A recent trend among health care professionals is the use of social media for professional purposes. These rapidly expanding media allow for timely and efficient access to health information, but they also carry the potential for increased liability. There is a paucity of research detailing how health care professionals, specifically pharmacists, use social media.<h4>Objective</h4>To characterize the use of social media by pharmacists in the Canadian province of Alberta and to ...[more]

PMID: 25762816

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundPatient-based analysis of social media is a growing research field with the aim of delivering precision medicine but it requires accurate classification of posts relating to patients' experiences. We motivate the need for this type of classification as a pre-processing step for further analysis of social media data in the context of related work in this area. In this paper we present experiments for a three-way document classification by patient voice, professional voice or other. We present results for a convolutional neural network classifier trained on English data from two different data sources (Reddit and Twitter) and two domains (cardiovascular and skin diseases).ResultsWe found that document classification by patient voice, professional voice or other can be done consistently manually (0.92 accuracy). Annotators agreed roughly equally for each domain (cardiovascular and skin) but they agreed more when annotating Reddit posts compared to Twitter posts. Best classification performance was obtained when training two separate classifiers for each data source, one for Reddit and one for Twitter posts, when evaluating on in-source test data for both test sets combined with an overall accuracy of 0.95 (and macro-average F1 of 0.92) and an F1-score of 0.95 for patient voice only.ConclusionThe main conclusion resulting from this work is that combining social media data from platforms with different characteristics for training a patient and professional voice classifier does not result in best possible performance. We showed that it is best to train separate models per data source (Reddit and Twitter) instead of a model using the combined training data from both sources. We also found that it is preferable to train separate models per domain (cardiovascular and skin) while showing that the difference to the combined model is only minor (0.01 accuracy). Our highest overall F1-score (0.95) obtained for classifying posts as patient voice is a very good starting point for further analysis of social media data reflecting the experience of patients.

Project description:Purpose Resident physicians use social media (SM) for many reasons. We sought to characterize current SM use by radiation oncology (RO) trainees for education and professional development. Methods and Materials An anonymous 40-question survey was sent by e-mail to RO residents in the 2018 to 2019 academic year. SM platform use, time spent on SM, professional use, and opinions regarding SM use were assessed. Descriptive statistics and a univariate logistic regression analysis were performed to identify factors associated with perceptions of SM and spending >25% of SM time for academic or professional purposes. Results Of the 615 residents surveyed, 149 responded (24% response rate). Facebook (73%), theMednet (62%), Instagram (59%), Twitter (57%), and Doximity (50%) were the top SM platforms used. Most respondents (53%) reported <25% of overall SM time on professional/academic purposes, and 21% reported using SM >60 minutes per day over the past week. Residents with an RO mentor on SM (n = 35; 24%; odds ratio [OR]: 2.79; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.29-6.08; P = .010), those participating in RO discussions on SM (n = 71; 48%; OR: 2.85; 95% CI, 1.42-5.72; P = .003), and those interacting with professional societies (n = 69; 46%; OR: 7.11; 95% CI, 3.32-15.24; P < .001) were more likely to spend >25% of their SM time on professional/academic purposes. The vast majority of respondents agreed that SM exposed them to novel educational content (82%) and was helpful for career development (65%). In addition, 69% agreed that SM can improve clinical skills and knowledge. A substantial minority agreed that SM distracts them from studying (38%) or they felt pressure to have a SM presence (29%). Conclusions Most RO residents reported that SM provides novel educational content and can help with career development. Potential disadvantages of SM for trainees may include distraction and pressure to maintain a SM presence. SM use by RO trainees merits further research to optimize its potential for education and professional development.

Project description:BackgroundHealth researchers are increasingly using social media in a professional capacity, and the applications of social media for health researchers are vast. However, there is currently no published evidence synthesis of the ways in which health researchers use social media professionally, and uncertainty remains as to how best to harness its potential.ObjectiveThis scoping review aimed to explore how social media is used by health researchers professionally, as reported in the literature.MethodsThe scoping review methodology guided by Arksey and O'Malley and Levac et al was used. Comprehensive searches based on the concepts of health research and social media were conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Web of Science databases, with no limitations applied. Articles were screened at the title and abstract level and at full text by two reviewers. One reviewer extracted data that were analyzed descriptively to map the available evidence.ResultsA total of 8359 articles were screened at the title and abstract level, of which 719 were also assessed at full text for eligibility. The 414 articles identified for inclusion were published in 278 different journals. Studies originated from 31 different countries, with the most prevalent being the United States (52.7% [218/414]). The health discipline of the first authors varied, with medicine (33.3% [138/414]) being the most common. A third of the articles covered health generally, with 61 health-specific topics. Papers used a range of social media platforms (mean 1.33 [SD 0.7]). A quarter of the articles screened reported on social media use for participant recruitment (25.1% [104/414]), followed by practical ways to use social media (15.5% [64/414]), and use of social media for content analysis research (13.3% [55/414]). Articles were categorized as celebratory (ie, opportunities for engagement, 72.2% [299/414]), contingent (ie, opportunities and possible limitations, 22.7% [94/414]) and concerned (ie, potentially harmful, 5.1% [21/414]).ConclusionsHealth researchers are increasingly publishing on their use of social media for a range of professional purposes. Although most of the sentiment around the use of social media in health research was celebratory, the uses of social media varied widely. Future research is needed to support health researchers to optimize their social media use.

Dataset Information

Professional use of social media by pharmacists.

Background

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Professional use of social media by pharmacists.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets