Social Media Influence Does Not Reflect Scholarly or Clinical Activity in Real Life

BACKGROUND:Social media has become a major source of communication in medicine. We aimed to understand the relationship between physicians’ social media influence and their scholarly and clinical activity. METHODS:We identified attending US electrophysiologists on Twitter. We compared physician Twit...

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Veröffentlicht in:Circulation. Arrhythmia and electrophysiology 2020-11, Vol.13 (11), p.e008847-e008847
Hauptverfasser: Zenger, Brian, Swink, J. Michael, Turner, Jeffrey L., Bunch, T. Jared, Ryan, John J., Shah, Rashmee U., Turakhia, Mintu P., Piccini, Jonathan P., Steinberg, Benjamin A.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:BACKGROUND:Social media has become a major source of communication in medicine. We aimed to understand the relationship between physicians’ social media influence and their scholarly and clinical activity. METHODS:We identified attending US electrophysiologists on Twitter. We compared physician Twitter activity to (1) scholarly publication record (h-index) and (2) clinical volume according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The ratio of observed versus expected (obs/exp) Twitter followers was calculated based on each scholarly (K-index) and clinical activity. RESULTS:We identified 284 physicians, with mean Twitter age of 5.0 (SD, 3.1) years and median 568 followers (25th, 75th195, 1146). They had a median 34.5 peer-reviewed articles (25th, 75th14, 105), 401 citations (25th, 75th102, 1677), and h-index 9 (25th, 75th4, 19.8). The median K-index was 0.4 (25th, 75th0.15, 1.0), ranging from 0.0008 to 29.2. The median number of electrophysiology procedures was 77 (25th, 75th0, 160) and evaluation and management visits 264 (25th, 75th59, 516) in 2017. The top 1% electrophysiologists for followers accounted for 20% of all followers, 17% of status updates, had a mean h-index of 6 (versus 15 for others, P=0.3), and accounted for 1% of procedural and evaluation and management volumes. They had a mean K-index of 21 (versus 0.77 for others, P
ISSN:1941-3149
1941-3084
DOI:10.1161/CIRCEP.120.008847