THE REACH OF TWEETS: #SOME4SURGERY
Rebecca Grossman3, Julio Mayol*1,2
1Departamento de Cirugía, Hospital Clinico San Carlos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; 2Unidad de Innovación, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria San Carlos, Madrid, Spain; 3Department of General Surgery, Backinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Amersham, United Kingdom
Introduction
The use of Twitter is increasing among surgeons, researchers, healthcare professionals, and patients. The aim of this study was to explore the reach of surgical communication on Twitter through an online conversation about surgical technology.
Material and Methods
A "tweetchat"? (Twitter conversation with 10 predefined questions) was led by two surgeons with 941 and 24,539 followers on November 23rd 2018. The #SoMe4Surgery ecosystem was the primary target of the conversation. Ten tweets containing questions for the audience were posted in a 60-minute period (9:00 pm-10:00 pm Madrid time). Data were collected by one of the co-authors using Twitonomy on November 29th 2018. The search included two hashtags, "#some4surgery"? and "#surgicaltechnology"?. Potential reach was defined as the total aggregate number of followers of the people who mentioned both keywords in their tweets.
Results
Between November 22nd 2018 at 8:15 pm and November 29th 2018 at 8:17 pm, 348 tweets including the two hashtags (Figure 1) were posted by 60 users (40 men, 13 women, 7 unknown) from 50 geolocations in 5 continents. The potential reach was 1,883,455 accounts. The ten most influential users (8 men, 1 woman, 1 unknown) had a median number of followers of 16,648 (range 7473-44648). The ten most engaged users (4 men, 3 women, 3 unknown) posted a median number of 27 tweets (range 11-346). The poll that attracted the most votes (Question 4, 288 votes) is shown in Figure 2. In this poll, preoperative imaging was voted by 53% of 288 participants as the technology that most significantly improved surgical practice. The top hashtags were #some4surgery, #surgicaltechnology, #surgicalpractice, #AI and #SSI.
Discussion
Social media may be used to disseminate information within a vast surgical ecosystem, engaging surgeons with a strong social media presence. The use of a standardised hashtag in a tweetchat allows information to reach a high volume of global Twitter users in the surgical community in a short space of time.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the #SoMe4Surgery community for the continued support
Figure 1. Number of tweets including both hashtags, #SoMe4Surgery and #SurgicalTechnology, over time
Figure 2. #Question4. This was the most retweeted tweet and had 288 votes.
Back to 2019 Posters
