The Beliefs and Usage of Social Media Among General Practitioner Trainers from Eleven Provinces of China: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

Abstract

It has become a new lifestyle of using social media (SM) to acquire all kinds of information. The objectives of this study were to determine general practitioner (GP) trainers' current use of SM and their beliefs and attitudes regarding use of SM. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was taken during a 1-week GP trainers' training program. Data probing GP trainers' use of SM and attitudes toward SM use in clinical work and education were collected and analyzed. Four hundred seven respondents participated in the survey, and the response rate was 61.4%. All the respondents reported that they have at least an SM account. A total of 99.3% of respondents replied that they would add a colleague as a friend via SM; however, only 68.6% of them would add a patient. More than half of the respondents have been contacted by a patient more than five times per year, whereas 67.2% of them attempted to contact a patient by SM less than three times per year. One hundred forty of 407 (34.4%) respondents used SM daily to explore medical information, whereas 42 of 407 (10.3%) contributed new information via SM on a daily basis. Nearly 50% of respondents believed that SM was useful and beneficial. SM is widely used among GP trainers from 11 provinces of China. Most of the participants believed that SM is useful and beneficial to their work. However, there are still some problems for them to use SM in healthcare and medical education, including separating personal and professional use of SM, SM policy, and the quality of information from SM.