Evaluation of the effect of social media in dentistry

Abstract

A large part of day to day interaction takes place through social media. Social media is the way people communicate, look for and share information among all age groups. Social media has begun to proliferate across the fields of medicine and dentistry also. The use of social media seems to transform the way of interaction between the dentist and the patient and open up new avenues of communication. Aim: To evaluate the willingness to use the social media among patients, dentists, and their networks to advocate and educate about oral health care. To explore patients’ and dentists’ attitude towards social media usage in dentistry and to discover potential opportunities and challenges for dentists to adopt social media practices. Material and Method: A cross-sectional study, Sampling technique: Stratified Random Sample size: 115 dentists, 115 patients. A close ended questionnaire was prepared and distributed among 115 dentist and 115 patients consisting of 10 sets of questions each for dentist and parents. Result: In this study, it was found that 55.38% of dentists were willing to use social media and their network to educate about oral health care and 39.12% parents were willing to use social media for the same. Conclusion: Pedodontists actively use social media to educate about oral health care while use of social media among parents is less. Keywords: Dentist, oral health, social media.