6ER-029 Spanish hospital pharmacy twittersphere: a quantitative study

BackgroundTwitter® (www.twitter.com) has become a useful digital tool for professional networking, update of knowledge and communication in the Spanish hospital pharmacy community.It is estimated that the number of Spanish Hospital pharmacists (SHP) is approximately 3,500, but the rate of SHP using Twitter is not well known.PurposeTo estimate what percentage of SHP have an active Twitter account.Material and methodsA cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out from 26 September 2017 to 14 October 2017.A new Twitter profile was created in privacy mode on the Google Chrome browser.SHP profiles were identified through the ‘snowball’ method following a four-steps procedure:Searching by keywords and hashtag on Twitter: ‘#FarmaciaHospitalaria’ + ‘Farmacia Hospitalaria’ + ‘Farmacéutica de Hospital’ + ‘Farmacéutico de Hospital’ + ‘Farmacia de Hospital’ + ‘Farmacéutica especialista’ + ‘Farmacéutico especialista’+ ‘Farmacia Hospital’ + ‘Hospital Pharmacist’ + ‘Hospital Pharmacy’ + ‘FIR’ and ‘#FIR’.Finding twitter lists related to ‘Farmacia Hospitalaria’ after searching on Google ‘inurl:lists inurl:Farmacia Hospitalaria site:twitter. com’.Followers and lists of Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacist (@sefh_).Using ‘Who to follow’ functionality on Twitter.Inclusion criteria were:Twitter accounts self–identified as HP or HP resident or shown as prespecified keywords in their biography.The exclusion criteria were:Non–institutional or personal profiles related with hospital pharmacy.Private companies profiles.Profiles without photo.Non–Spanish accounts.Each Twitter profile that met the inclusion criteria was followed by the new created account.To export the following accounts database and to analyse the data, two online tools were used: Twittonomy and Google Sheets, respectively.ResultsA total of 698 Twitter accounts were identified as SHP. Most of them (64.2%, n=448) corresponded with feminine profiles, and the rest were masculine (26.5%, n=185) or non-determined (9.3%, n=65).The number of institutional profiles was 22 (five associated with theSpanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy and 17 associated with their work teams).At the time of the study 25 Spanish Hospital Pharmacy Departments have an active Twitter profile.The rate of SHP with a Twitter account was 18.1%.ConclusionThere are many institutional Twitter accounts associated with the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy.Despite being a relevant hospital pharmacist community, the rate of SHP with a presence on