Impact of social media on knowledge dissemination between physicians during COVID-19 virus outbreak: A cross sectional survey

  1. Aliae AR Mohamed-Hussein
  2. Nahed A Makhlouf
  3. Heba A Yassa
  4. Hoda A Makhlouf

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Abstract

Background

Social media became an alternative platform for communicating during medical crisis as COVID-19 pandemic.

Aim of the study

1- to describe the use of social media by Physicians during Covid-19 outbreak 2- to determine how physicians obtain their medical information about the emerging disease 3- to determine physicians practice and how do they use the information received.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional web-based anonymous survey. Data were collected from Health Care Professional (HCPs) via fulfilling online designed questionnaire. Descriptive statistics with frequencies and percentages are presented. Results: The response rate was 66.2% (232/350). Smart phones was the most commonly used (94.8%) followed by laptops (13.4%). Facebook was used by 65.8% and WhatsApp by 52.8%. The data shared were medical newsletters (68%) and educational movies (52.2%). Source of information were mainly professional local pages (60.8%) then WHO pages (53.7%). Physicians shared trusted information (66.7%) and they confirmed the data were correct before publishing in 55.5%. They shared mainly WHO announcements and alerts (44%), professional lectures (32.1%) and 13.3% shared comics. Overall, 71% perceived lots of data about the cause of disease, clinical picture, daily spread, fatality rate and alert of the countries.

Conclusion

Physicians are active users of social media. Facebook and WhatsApp are useful platforms to spread right data about diseases during pandemics. Most physicians are positive towards data published; they watch, read and disseminate trusted informations.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.31.20118232: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableDemographic characteristics questions including age (in years), gender (male or female), job category and country.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04319315RecruitingSocial Media Effect on Knowledge Dissemination During COVID-…

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.31.20118232 on medRxiv