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Running head: Impact of Social Media in Healthcare
Impact of Social Media in Healthcare
Liberty University
Social Media in Health Care
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SOCIAL MEDIA IN HEALTHCARE
The use of social media platform has exponentially increased over the past few years.
Every day, people use social media as part of daily communication. Most people can easily
access social media via electronic devices such as laptop, smartphones, Ipad, and other portable
electronic devices. Social media is defined as a form of electronic communication and an
internet-based tools that allow an individual or a community to communicate and share
information, ideas, personal messages, visual images, and engagement with either single or
multiple user across the world in real time (Ventola, 2014).
There are different types of social media platform, and each type consist of different
purpose and functions of networking. The different types of social media include social
networking, microblogging, media sharing, and crowd sourcing. In healthcare, social media is
used as a tool to potentially improve health outcomes, promote health awareness, provide health
education to the community to increase patient health awareness and create professional
networking (Smailhodzic, Hooijsma, Boonstra & Langley, 2016).
Types of Social Media
Social networking sites in healthcare are developed for physicians, nurses, and other
healthcare professionals to connect and communicate with one another to discuss patient medical
treatment, exchange medical advices via internal forum board, and peer-to-peer query (Chretien
& Kind, 2013). These social networking sites are for private use and dedicated for members of
the healthcare professionals only. Physicians and nurses use social networking such as Facebook
to communicate with the general public in answering questions regarding medical condition.
The Pew Research Center (2010) reported that 36 % percent of adults living with chronic disease
has received medical advice or health information from the internet and approximately 44% of
users with no chronic medical condition uses social networking and internet to gather
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information about health condition for themselves of for a family member or peers. Health
organizations utilize social networking to improve customer satisfaction and gather information
for survey use. Comments and feedbacks left by patients and customers from through social
networking sites such as Facebook is used for qualitative analysis for quality improvement of a
hospital (Huppertz & Otto, 2018;2017). A cross sectional study was performed to evaluate the
use of social networking in gathering health information. A sampling method survey from 156
respondent users were collected and analyzed and resulted that “35 percent of respondents trust
health information, 32 percent do not trust the information and 33 percent do not always trust
health related information.” (Bhaskaran, Kumar & Janodia, 2017).
Another social media tool in healthcare is the use of microblogging and blogging in
social networking sites. Microblogging allows users to post comments, messages or updates
related to health discussions or topics (Grajales, Francisco Jose, Sheps, Ho, Novak-Lauscher, &
Eysenbach, 2014). Microblogging uses hashtags to link certain topics and discussion within the
forum. Twitter is one of the most popular microblogging used by the public and in the healthcare
settings. Health organizations use microblogging to communicate with their employees and
leadership to provide important updates, changes in health policy and clinical practice, and a
source for educational material (Curry, 2012). A study was performed to determine how
microblogging is an effective tool to disseminate information and engage other healthcare
professional and the public to repost health information. The study ranged from lasted from
November 2012 to November 2013 and concluded that the 598 original messages were reposted
34442 times with 6013 comments received (Wang, Wang, Xin, Pleasants & Shi, 2016).
Media sharing including photos and videos are also a form of social media used in
healthcare. Youtube is one of the most popular sites used by both the public and healthcare
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professionals. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (2010), 75 percent
of patients’ medical knowledge about chronic conditions were influenced by the knowledge
acquired through media sharing sites. Physicians and nurses can upload or embed digital content
on the web about instructional and educational videos about medical conditions, nursing
interventions or clinical skills, recommendations, and even just a video about sharing personal
healthcare experiences. The benefit of using media sharing in healthcare includes providing
resource for education and training, current medical news and health policy, and continuing
medical and nursing education. Media sharing is an effective visual tool to help learn new things
from other users.
Crowdsourcing or professional networking is a new field that uses social media tools and
involves a large group of people and make use of the knowledge and skills to solve problems.
Crowdsourcing in healthcare is used in areas in health focusing on diagnosis, survey, nutrition,
public health and environment, education, genetics, psychology, and, general medicine (Wazny,
2018).
Impact of Social Media in Healthcare
The impact of social media in healthcare affect both patients and healthcare providers.
For patients, the use of social media can be a valuable source of information when gathering
health and organizational information. The use of social media has allowed patient to directly
communicate with their healthcare providers and ask questions about new medical symptoms or
refilling prescription (Chauhan, George & Coffin, 2012). Evidence from a study shows that
social media in healthcare can improve patient-health provider interaction, which can lead to
improving health outcomes by means of providing patient education, health monitoring, and
compliance with treatment (Househ, 2013). Improving clinical education via media sharing,
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blogs, and social networking as a source of information has been beneficial for health care
providers. Disseminating public information across the globe for public awareness during
epidemic event can happen within seconds via social media. Therefore, social media can be a
powerful tool for public education regarding public health issues. While the advantages of social
media in healthcare appears to be promising, there are dangers or risk involve in using social
media in healthcare. Lack of quality and reliability of health information is one of the main
limitation or issue in social media (Moorhead, Hazlett, Harrison, Carroll, Irwin & Hoving, 2013).
Some articles found on social media has limited information about the author or the medical
information provided lacks the reference it needs to support the claims (Pirraglia & Kravitz,
2013). The use of social media by healthcare professionals can damage reputation by posting of
unprofessional content that such as obscene pictures, violations of patient privacy, or making
negative comments about affiliated healthcare organizations. Breach of patient confidentiality
using social media is a violation of the federal law. Therefore, healthcare professionals must
remain ethical and refrain from using personal identifying information that could potentially
exposed patients’ information
My Healthcare Organization Policy in Social Media
As an active service member in the military, the use of social media in my organization is
highly limited to many things not only in healthcare but in general use of social media elsewhere
to protect the security of the military operations. Our organizational policy with using social
media includes: prohibited use of inappropriate links, posting references to any information that
would reveal sensitive movements of military assets or personnel or the locations of units,
installations, or personnel where uncertainty is an element of security of a military plan or
program, all content on an Air Force public social media site must be cleared for public release,
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exclusion of material that is classified, scientific and technical information that has not been
cleared for public release, prohibition of use of personal information protected by the privacy act,
use of copyright information, not to use of links or any sites that discuss political activity,
encourages fans to comment off topic or with vulgarity should be avoided, use of survey without
proper approval, and units may not use social media to seek continual consensus,
recommendations, or advice from non-federal, state, or local government officials acting in their
official government capacity except using technology that is open to the general public
(Department of the Air Force, 2017). We also follow the same organizational policy in
healthcare in terms of social media use such as protecting patient privacy in accordance with the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In my opinion, the use of social
media in healthcare setting is beneficial in terms of patient care and improving patient health
outcomes. I visualize how patients will be better in managing medical conditions properly if
he/she is able to communicate with healthcare professionals and ask questions about medical
symptoms especially patients with chronic medical conditions that require special attention. It
would also benefit healthcare providers in the way patient care is performed by exchanging
information from other healthcare providers worldwide. My opinion in using social media is that
some people tend to misuse social media and use it as a mean to protest rather than using it for
the purpose of education and resource.
Conclusion
As our generation move forward, using social media in healthcare can greatly impact the
way healthcare professionals provide patient care. Social media is a great tool in professional
networking, patient education, organizational promotion, and public health announcement.
However, people must be educated on the appropriate use of social media particularly when
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gathering health information from credible sources and properly interpret the collected
information.
References
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SOCIAL MEDIA IN HEALTHCARE
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