Social media for patients: benefits and drawbacks

Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 2017, Pages 141-145

  De Martino, Ivan ^a   D’Apolito, Rocco ^a   McLawhorn, Alexander S ^a   Fehring, Keith A ^b   Sculco, Peter K ^a   Gasparini, Giorgio ^c  

^a HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY   (United States)

^b Charlotte Hip and Knee Center   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY MAGNA GRAECIA OF CATANZARO   (Italy)

Author keywords

Internet; Patient patient relations; Social media; Social networking; Web 2.0

Indexed keywords

COMPUTER INTERFACE; DISEASE COURSE; DOCTOR PATIENT RELATION; HEALTH CARE DELIVERY; HEALTH CARE QUALITY; HEALTH CARE UTILIZATION; HOSPITAL BUILDING; HUMAN; MEDICAL INFORMATION; ONLINE SYSTEM; PHYSICIAN ATTITUDE; REVIEW; SOCIAL MEDIA; WEB BROWSER;

EID: 85009932526     PISSN: 1935973X     EISSN: 19359748     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12178-017-9394-7     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. Hesse BW, Moser RP, Rutten LJ. Surveys of physicians and electronic health information. N Engl J Med. 2010;362:859–60. doi:10.1056/NEJMc0909595.
2. Thompson JB. Merchants of culture. The publishing business in the twenty-first century. Business. 2011:209–20. doi:10.1108/17506200710779521.
3. von Muhlen M, Ohno-Machado L. Reviewing social media use by clinicians. J Am Med Informatics Assoc. 2012;19:777–81. doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2012-000990.
4. Kaplan AM, Haenlein M. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Bus Horiz. 2010;53:59–68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003.
5. Ventola CL. Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. P T. 2014;39:491–520.
6. Hamm MP, Chisholm A, Shulhan J, Milne A, Scott SD, Given LM, et al. Social media use among patients and caregivers: a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2013;3:1–10. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2013-002819.
7. Househ M, Borycki E, Kushniruk A. Empowering patients through social media: the benefits and challenges. Health Informatics J. 2014;20:50–8. doi:10.1177/1460458213476969.
8. Duggan M. The demographics of social media users n.d. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/the-demographics-of-social-media-users/.
9. Health Fact Sheet n.d. http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/.
10. Eckler P, Worsowicz G, Rayburn JW. Social media and health care: an overview. PM R. 2010;2:1046–50. doi:10.1016/j.pmrj.2010.09.005.
11. Lenhart A, Purcell K, Smith A, Zickuhr K. Social media & mobile Internet use among teens and young adults. n.d. http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/02/03/social-media-and-young-adults/.
12. Korda H, Itani Z. Harnessing social media for health promotion and behavior change. Health Promot Pract. 2011:15–23. doi:10.1177/1524839911405850.
13. Perrin A. Social media usage: 2005–2015 n.d. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/.
14. Antheunis ML, Tates K, Nieboer TE. Patients’ and health professionals’ use of social media in health care: motives, barriers and expectations. Patient Educ Couns. 2013;92:426–31. doi:10.1016/j.pec.2013.06.020.
15. • Krempec J, Hall J, Biermann JS. Internet use by patients in orthopaedic surgery. Iowa Orthop J. 2003;23:80–2. The authors evaluated Internet use among orthopedic patients in a private practice general orthopedic setting. Forty-five percent of patients had used the Internet either personally or thru a surrogate to search for information about their orthopedic condition. The majority of users found medical information on Internet sites to be useful and accurate. The number one choice for reconciling conflicting information was to ask a physician or a nurse
16. • Curry E, Li X, Nguyen J, Matzkin E. Prevalence of internet and social media usage in orthopedic surgery. Orthop Rev (Pavia). 2014;6:5483. doi:10.4081/or.2014.5483. The authors evaluated the prevalence of Internet or social media usage in new patients referred to a major academic orthopedics center. Seven hundred fifty-two first-time adult patients were surveyed. Fifty percent of patients used social networking sites, and in their multivariable regression analysis, they found that younger patient age and patients having performed prior research on their condition were more likely to use social networking sites. Sports medicine patients tended to be higher social networking users (35.9%) relative to other services (9.8–17.9%). Younger age was the biggest indicator predicting the use of social media
17. Rozental TD, George TM, Chacko AT. Social networking among upper extremity patients. J Hand Surg. 2010;35:819–23. e811
18. Sadah SA, Shahbazi M, Wiley MT, Hristidis V. Demographic-based content analysis of web-based health-related social media. J Med Internet Res. 2016;18:e148. doi:10.2196/jmir.5327.
19. Wilson EV. Patient-centered e-health. United States: Medical Information Science Reference; September 15, 2008
20. Hoffman-Goetz L, Donelle L, Thomson MD. Clinical guidelines about diabetes and the accuracy of peer information in an unmoderated online health forum for retired persons. Inform Health Soc Care. 2009;34:91–9. doi:10.1080/17538150902865136.
21. Kordzadeh N. Social media in health care. Contemporary consumer health informatics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 101–23. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25973-4_6.
22. Greene JA, Choudhry NK, Kilabuk E, Shrank WH. Online social networking by patients with diabetes: a qualitative evaluation of communication with Facebook. J Gen Intern Med. 2011;26:287–92. doi:10.1007/s11606-010-1526-3.
23. Tanis M. Health-related on-line forums: what’s the big attraction? J Health Commun. 2008;13:698–714. doi:10.1080/10810730802415316.
24. Lagu T, Hannon NS, Rothberg MB, Lindenauer PK. Patients’ evaluations of health care providers in the era of social networking: an analysis of physician-rating websites. J Gen Intern Med. 2010;25(9):942–6. doi:10.1007/s11606-010-1383-0.
25. Kadry B, Chu LF, Kadry B, Gammas D, Macario A. Analysis of 4999 online physician ratings indicates that most patients give physicians a favorable rating. J Med Internet Res. 2011;13:e95. doi:10.2196/jmir.1960.
26. Agarwal N, Yiliyasi Y. Information quality challenges in social media. Proc 15th Int Conf Inf Qual 2010:234–48
27. Silberg WM, Lundberg GD, Musacchio RA. Assessing, controlling, and assuring the quality of medical information on the internet: caveant lector et viewor—let the reader and viewer beware. JAMA. 1997;277:1244–5. doi:10.1001/jama.277.15.1244.
28. Charnock D, Shepperd S, Needham G, Gann R. DISCERN: an instrument for judging the quality of written consumer health information on treatment choices. J Epidemiol Community Health. 1999;53:105–11. doi:10.1136/jech.53.2.105.
29. Boyer C, Selby M, Appel RD. The health on the net code of conduct for medical and health web sites. Stud Health Technol Inform. 1998;52:1163–6. doi:10.3233/978-1-60750-896-0-1163.
30. • Cassidy JT, Baker JF. Orthopaedic patient information on the World Wide Web: an essential review. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2016;98:325–38. doi:10.2106/JBJS.N.01189. The authors performed a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature pertaining online orthopedic information. Thirty-eight peer-reviewed articles published since were reviewed. They found that the quality and readability of online orthopedic information were generally poor. Studies examining readability have focused on pages produced by professional orthopedic societies
31. • Brooks FM, Lawrence H, Jones A, McCarthy MJH. Youtube as a source of patient information for lumbar discectomy. Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2014;96:144–6. doi:10.1308/003588414X13814021676396. The authors performed a systematic search of YouTube videos on lumbar discectomy to assess their quality. Eighty-one videos were identified, with a total number of viewings of 2,722,964 (range 139–111,891) and an average number of 34,037 viewings per video. They found that the quality of YouTube videos was variable. There were 16 with a rating of “good”, 25 with a rating of “average,” and 40 with a rating of “poor” or “inadequate.” The most common missing information was related to anesthesia or complications. Most videos (69/81) were broadcast by surgeons or surgical institutes
32. • Elhassan Y, Sheridan G, Nassiri M, Osman M, Kiely P, Noel J. Discectomy-related information on the internet: does the quality follow the surge? Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2015;40:121–5. doi:10.1097/BRS.0000000000000689. The authors evaluated the quality of discectomy-related information available on the Internet. Fifty-three web sites were identified and analyzed. Commercial web sites were predominant. The overall quality of information regarding discectomy was poor and variable despite an exponential increase in the number of users and web sites, with a slight trend toward improvement; only 20 to 30% are of good quality, compared with that 10 years ago (<10%)