General Practitioner perspectives and wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a mixed method social media analysis
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Abstract
Background
General practitioners (GPs) adapted their work practices rapidly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Limited research has explored their perspectives over this time, and factors that may affect their wellbeing.
Method
We conducted a social media analysis of NHS GPs practising in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify issues which may affect their wellbeing. To identify trends, we assessed 91,034 tweets from 185 GPs on Twitter who posted before and during the pandemic, (January 2019 to February 2021). To identify themes related to wellbeing, we analysed qualitatively 7145 tweets posted during the pandemic from 200 GPs.
Results
We identified inter-connecting themes that affect GP wellbeing, predominately around resources and support. Lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing led to discussion of safety and risk, as well as increased workload resulting from staff isolating. Expressions of low morale and feeling undervalued were widespread, resulting from the perceived lack of support from the government, media and the general public at a time of staff shortages and high workload.
Trends in themes were apparent, with emphasis on PPE, testing and safety March to May 2020 and morale, abuse, ‘closed’ GP surgeries, testing, flu vaccines and overworked September to October 2020. From December 2020 the COVID-19 vaccine dominated posts.
Conclusion
GPs’ experiences and perceptions as reflected in their social media posts during the pandemic have changed over time; perceived lack of support and resources, and negative public perceptions have exacerbated their concerns about existing underlying pressures.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.19.21265194: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization For the qualitative analysis one author (SG) randomly selected 200 GPs from the total 381 who posted tweets from February 2020. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. 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: No clinical trial numbers were …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.19.21265194: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization For the qualitative analysis one author (SG) randomly selected 200 GPs from the total 381 who posted tweets from February 2020. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. 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: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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