Abstract
Background:Recently, social media use has been rising among dental students and practitioners.Objective:The aim of this study was to investigate the usage, attitudes, and professionalism on social media among dental students and dentists in Saudi Arabia.Methods:This cross-sectional study investigated 779 dental students, interns, and dentists recruited from university hospitals and private clinics in three major cities (Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dammam), representing the eastern, central, and western regions of Saudi Arabia. Validated questionnaires were distributed to the participants asking about the use of social media for general purposes and professional purposes, attitudes on the social media, professionalism on social media, and the use of social media for marketing purposes. This study was ethically reviewed and approved by the Faculty of Dentistry Institutional Review Board, Umm Al-Qura University with application number (102-18).Results:Among the participants, the social media platforms most frequently used on a weekly basis are WhatsApp (m = 6.13 days/week, SD = 2.10), Snapchat (m = 5.33, SD = 2.65), and Instagram (m = 4.63, SD = 2.84). LinkedIn was the least frequently used platform. The most common professional uses were to watch clinical procedures (80.49%), find new information (79.59%), learn from peers (61.1%), and communicate with patients (5.76%). Only 47.75% followed their university or workplace professionalism guidelines, and 31.74% do not have any professionalism guidelines for using social media. There were 28.75% of participants who had considered posting information/photos about a patient without the patient’s permission, those who had criticized a dental colleague numbered 49.04%, and 59.69% had criticized a dental organization. However, only a few items had statistically significant differences between dental students and dentists.Conclusion:More stringent guidelines regarding proper conduct online should be implemented and included in the dental continuous education material.
Highlights
Facebook has been reported to be the most commonly used platform among dental students ranging between 91% - 98.9% in the United States and the United Kingdom, at 91.0% and 98.9%, respectively [6 - 8]
Around one-third do not have any professionalism guidelines for using social media, and our results showed that one-third of the participants have posted patient information online without the patient’s permission
In our study, we found that these professional uses were not exclusive to students but were found among interns and dentists currently in practice, with no significant differences between them
Summary
Social media can be defined as ‘websites and applications. Recent studies have described widespread social media use among the students that involves more than one application. Facebook has been reported to be the most commonly used platform among dental students ranging between 91% - 98.9% in the United States and the United Kingdom, at 91.0% and 98.9%, respectively [6 - 8]. YouTube and Instagram were the second most used, and Twitter showed less popularity among dental students in the United Kingdom [8]. Some students have reported accessing YouTube to view videos of dental procedures before they are scheduled to perform it [9, 10]. Social media use has been rising among dental students and practitioners
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