Previously submitted to: Interactive Journal of Medical Research (no longer under consideration since Oct 06, 2018)
Date Submitted: Mar 27, 2017
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Social Media Utilization Among Orthopedic Surgeons in a Large US City
Background:
Physician Internet and social media presence is increasingly common as a sophisticated patient population and referral base continues to seek information when selecting an orthopedic surgeon.
Objective:
We hypothesized that American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) Fellows of fewer than 20 years would have a higher Internet and social media presence when compared to AAOS fellows of more than 20 years. We limited our analysis regionally to San Francisco, California.
Methods:
A current list of AAOS Fellows practicing in San Francisco was obtained from the AAOS Website. A total of 86 current fellows, not including candidate and resident members, were compiled. The list was divided into AAOS Fellows of fewer than 20 years and AAOS Fellows of more than 20 years. An investigation was made regarding Internet and social media presence via search engines for both individual physicians and for websites for physician practices (solo or group versus hospital or university-based). Additionally, the presence of physician and practice accounts for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and physician accounts for Instagram, YouTube, and Google+ was identified. Internet and social media presence was compared between these two groups and percentage of participation was evaluated.
Results:
94% of all San Francisco AAOS Fellows have an active Internet website accessible to the general public and 41% of Fellows have online appointment availability. Despite Fellows in the under 20-year group and private practice not having significantly more online appointment availability than the over 20-year group and university/hospital-based setting, there was a clear trend in that direction. The under 20-year group participated in an average of 1.2 more social media sites (4.1 vs 2.9 P=0.02). There was no significant difference between private practice and university/hospital-based practice with regard to social media usage. Google+ was the most likely utilized social media website followed by LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The under 20-year group utilized newer social media sites like Twitter and Instagram more frequently than the over 20-year group.
Conclusions:
Internet and social media presence is clearly and important component of physician practice amongst San Francisco orthopedic surgeons. Private practice physicians and surgeons with fewer years in practice are more likely to utilize online appointment software.
Citation
