Just What the Doctor Tweeted: Physicians’ Challenges and Rewards of Using Twitter

ABSTRACT

More than 75,000 health care professionals worldwide share information and discuss treatments on Twitter, making it one of the most popular and influential social media sites for health. This engaging medium has enormous potential for establishing relationships and disseminating information among physicians, their colleagues, and patients. However, little is known about how physicians navigate Twitter and what challenges and benefits come from using the platform. By conducting in-depth interviews with 17 physicians who interact with Twitter at least once per week, it was revealed that physicians overcome concerns of privacy and time constraints to learn and share new research, connect with colleagues, manage online personas, and develop relationships with patients on a new level that goes beyond the typical office visit. Implications include the possibility of enriched patient–provider relationships due to physicians divulging opinions and personal information in a public forum to minimize established power structures and enable better communication. This exploratory study establishes that Twitter is fertile ground for future research to explore how the medium can influence patient behavior, alter attitudes, and influence communication between patients and providers.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Carla L. Fisher and Yelena Alpert for their guidance and contributions to the study, as well as all of the participating physicians for their time and insights.

Notes

¹ According to Merriam-Webster, “social media” is defined as “electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content.”

² Twitter is ranked as number 5 in Quantcast’s Top U.S. Site Ranking.

³ In addition to a follower limit, physicians had to tweet at least once per week since January 2014.

⁴ TwitterDoctors.net contains over 800 doctors who self-register. Listly.com is a website created by users who rank more than 1,000 curated physicians who use Twitter to “further the conversation on healthcare social media.”

⁵ Only two physicians interviewed work with social media specialists or hire someone to participate on social media on their behalf. The rest of the physicians manage their own social media accounts.

⁶ A hashtag is a word, preceded by the pound sign (#), that is used to identify and group conversations on a specific topic.

⁷ A popular example of a global chat is Healthcare Communications and Social Media (#hcsm). There are also chats designed for specialties, such as the Journal of the American College of Radiology (#jacr) weekly chat.