Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 1P5, Canada.
Koç University School of Medicine, Istanbul 34450, Turkey.
Curr Oncol. 2022 Nov 8;29(11):8483-8500. doi: 10.3390/curroncol29110669.
Rapid and efficient communication regarding quickly evolving medical information was paramount for healthcare providers and patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last several years, social media platforms such as Twitter have emerged as important tools for health promotion, virtual learning among healthcare providers, and patient support. We conducted a qualitative thematic content analysis on tweets using the hashtags #BreastSurgery, #BreastCancer, #BreastOncology, #Pandemic, and #COVID19. Advocacy organizations were the most frequent authors of tweets captured in this dataset, and most tweets came from the United States of America (64%). Seventy-three codes were generated from the data, and, through iterative, inductive analysis, three major themes were developed: patient hesitancy and vulnerability, increased efforts in knowledge sharing, and evolving best practices. We found that Twitter was an effective way to share evolving best practices, education, and collective experiences among key stakeholders. As Twitter is increasingly used as a tool for health promotion and knowledge translation, a better understanding of how key stakeholders engage with healthcare-related topics on the platform can help optimize the use of this powerful tool.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，快速有效地交流快速演变的医学信息对医疗保健提供者和患者至关重要。在过去的几年中，Twitter 等社交媒体平台已成为促进健康、医疗保健提供者之间的虚拟学习以及患者支持的重要工具。我们使用 #BreastSurgery、#BreastCancer、#BreastOncology、#Pandemic 和 #COVID19 等标签对推文进行了定性主题内容分析。倡导组织是该数据集中推文的最常见作者，而且大多数推文来自美利坚合众国（64%）。从数据中生成了 73 个代码，并通过迭代、归纳分析，得出了三个主要主题：患者的犹豫和脆弱性、知识共享力度的加大以及最佳实践的不断发展。我们发现，Twitter 是在利益相关者之间分享最佳实践、教育和集体经验的有效途径。随着 Twitter 越来越多地被用作促进健康和知识转化的工具，更好地了解关键利益相关者如何在该平台上参与与医疗保健相关的主题，可以帮助优化该强大工具的使用。
