Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Infodemiology
Date Submitted: May 30, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 6, 2024
Improving Medical Abortion Care: VEILLE, a Non-Interventional, Exploratory, Retrospective Study on Women’s Experiences Using Social Media.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Abortion (also known as termination of pregnancy) is an essential element of women’s reproductive health care. Feedback of women who underwent medical termination of pregnancy (MToP) about their experience is crucial to help practitioners to identify their needs and develop necessary tools to improve abortion care process. However, collection of this feedback is quite challenging. Social media offer anonymity for women who share their abortion experience.
Objective:
To collect and analyze social media posts related to women feedback published by French women experiencing MToP.
Methods:
Retrospective study analyzing posts from generalized and specialized medical web forums containing at least one keyword related to medical abortion. Only posts geolocated in France, written in French, and published from January 1, 2017 to November 30, 2021 were extracted.
Results:
Analysis of 5398 identified posts (3409 users) led to the identification of 9 major topics: Personal experience (44.7%), Community support (19.6%), Pain and bleeding (14.8%), Psychological experience (14.1%), Questioned efficacy (7.6%), Social pressure (6.9%), Positive experiences (4.8%), Menstrual cycle disorders (2%), and Reported inefficacy (1.9%). Pain, which was mentioned in 1627 posts (30.1%), was the most frequently reported medical term. It was usually mentioned after the second drug intake (prostaglandin analogue) and considered severe to unbearable in 24.5% of the cases. Lack of information was the most frequently reported difficulty during and after the process.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that women use social media to share their experiences, offer and find support, and provide and receive information regarding medical abortion. With the objective of constantly improving patient's quality of care, infodemiology appears to be a useful tool providing patients' feedback and offering opportunity to enhance care in women undergoing MToP. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
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