Maben-Feaster Rosalyn E, Stansfield R Brent, Opipari AnneMarie, Hammoud Maya M
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.
Graduate Medical Education, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2018 Mar 12;20(3):e78. doi: 10.2196/jmir.8056.
One-third of Americans use social media websites as a source of health care information. Twitter, a microblogging site that allows users to place 280-character posts-or tweets-on the Web, is emerging as an important social media platform for health care. However, most guidelines on medical professionalism on social media are based on expert opinion.
This study sought to examine if provider Twitter profiles with educational tweets were viewed as more professional than profiles with personal tweets or a mixture of the two, and to determine the impact of provider gender on perceptions of professionalism in an academic obstetrics and gynecology clinic.
This study randomized obstetrics and gynecology patients at the University of Michigan Von Voigtlander Clinic to view one of six medical provider Twitter profiles, which differed in provider gender and the nature of tweets. Each participant answered 10 questions about their perception of the provider's professionalism based on the Twitter profile content.
The provider profiles with educational tweets alone received higher mean professionalism scores than profiles with personal tweets. Specifically, the female and male provider profiles with exclusively educational tweets had the highest and second highest overall mean professionalism ratings at 4.24 and 3.85, respectively. In addition, the female provider profiles received higher mean professionalism ratings than male provider profiles with the same content. The female profile with mixed content received a mean professionalism rating of 3.38 compared to 3.24 for the male mixed-content profile, and the female profile with only personal content received a mean professionalism rating of 3.68 compared to 2.68 for the exclusively personal male provider profile.
This study showed that in our obstetrics and gynecology clinic, patients perceived providers with educational profiles as more professional than those with a mixture of educational and personal tweets or only personal tweets. It also showed that our patient population perceived the female provider with educational tweets to be the most professional. This study will help inform the development of evidence-based guidelines for social media use in medicine as it adds to the growing body of literature examining professionalism and social media.
三分之一的美国人将社交媒体网站作为医疗保健信息的来源。推特是一个允许用户在网上发布280字符帖子（即推文）的微博客网站，正成为医疗保健领域一个重要的社交媒体平台。然而，大多数关于社交媒体上医学职业精神的指南都基于专家意见。
本研究旨在探讨发布教育类推文的医疗服务提供者推特个人资料是否比发布个人推文或两者混合的个人资料被视为更具专业性，并确定医疗服务提供者的性别对学术性妇产科诊所中职业精神认知的影响。
本研究将密歇根大学冯·沃伊特兰德诊所的妇产科患者随机分组，让他们查看六个医疗服务提供者推特个人资料中的一个，这些个人资料在医疗服务提供者性别和推文性质方面存在差异。每位参与者根据推特个人资料内容回答10个关于他们对医疗服务提供者职业精神认知的问题。
仅发布教育类推文的医疗服务提供者个人资料获得的平均职业精神得分高于发布个人推文的个人资料。具体而言，仅发布教育类推文的女性和男性医疗服务提供者个人资料的总体平均职业精神评分最高和第二高，分别为4.24和3.85。此外，女性医疗服务提供者个人资料获得的平均职业精神评分高于具有相同内容的男性医疗服务提供者个人资料。内容混合的女性个人资料的平均职业精神评分为3.38，而男性混合内容个人资料为3.24；仅包含个人内容的女性个人资料的平均职业精神评分为3.68，而仅发布个人内容的男性医疗服务提供者个人资料为2.68。
本研究表明，在我们的妇产科诊所中，患者认为拥有教育类个人资料的医疗服务提供者比那些发布教育类和个人类推文混合内容或仅发布个人推文的医疗服务提供者更具专业性。研究还表明，我们的患者群体认为发布教育类推文的女性医疗服务提供者最具专业性。这项研究将有助于为医学领域社交媒体使用的循证指南的制定提供信息，因为它为越来越多研究职业精神和社交媒体的文献增添了内容。
