Impact of social media on knowledge dissemination between physicians during COVID-19 virus outbreak: A cross sectional survey

Mohamed-Hussein, A.; Makhlouf, n.; Yassa, H.; Makhlouf, H.

Background: Social media became an alternative platform for communicating during medical crisis as COVID-19 pandemic. Aim of the study: 1- to describe the use of social media by Physicians during Covid-19 outbreak 2- to determine how physicians obtain their medical information about the emerging disease 3- to determine physicians practice and how do they use the information received. Methods: This is a cross-sectional web-based anonymous survey. Data were collected from Health Care Professional (HCPs) via fulfilling online designed questionnaire. Descriptive statistics with frequencies and percentages are presented. Results: The response rate was 66.2% (232/350). Smart phones was the most commonly used (94.8%) followed by laptops (13.4%). Facebook was used by 65.8% and WhatsApp by 52.8%. The data shared were medical newsletters (68%) and educational movies (52.2%). Source of information were mainly professional local pages (60.8%) then WHO pages (53.7%). Physicians shared trusted information (66.7%) and they confirmed the data were correct before publishing in 55.5%. They shared mainly WHO announcements and alerts (44%), professional lectures (32.1%) and 13.3% shared comics. Overall, 71% perceived lots of data about the cause of disease, clinical picture, daily spread, fatality rate and alert of the countries. Conclusion: Physicians are active users of social media. Facebook and WhatsApp are useful platforms to spread right data about diseases during pandemics. Most physicians are positive towards data published; they watch, read and disseminate trusted informations.