JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although the presence of medical societies on social networks (SNs) could be interesting for disseminating professional information, there is no study investigating their presence on SNs.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to describe the worldwide presence, visibility and activity of national anaesthesia societies on SNs.

Methods:

This observational study assessed the active presence (≥1 post in the year preceding the collection date) of World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA) member societies on the SNs Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We collected data concerning each anaesthesia society on the WFSA website.

Results:

Among the 136 societies, 66 (48.5%) had an active presence on at least one SN, the most used social network was Facebook (44.1%), followed by Twitter (27.2%), YouTube (19.1%) and Instagram (11.8%). The SN with the largest number of followers was Facebook for 52 societies (78.8%) and Twitter for 12 societies (18.2%). The number of followers was 361 [75-1806] on Twitter, 2494 [1049-5369] on Facebook, 1400 [303-3058] on Instagram and 214 [33-955] on YouTube. There was a strong correlation between the number of posts and the number of followers on Twitter (r=0.95 [0.91;0.97]; P<0.0001), Instagram (r=0.83 [0.58;0.94]; P<0.0001), and YouTube (r=0.69 [0.42;0.85]; P<0.0001). There was no difference between societies with and without active SN accounts according to the density of physician anaesthesia providers in the country

Conclusions:

Less than half of national anaesthesia societies have at least one active account on SNs. Twitter and Facebook are the most commonly used SNs.