Study shows power of Twitter for sharing physician-generated medical news

Over a 1-year period, academic cardiovascular physicians at the Mayo Clinic used a new Twitter account to share medical news and gained more than 1,200 followers, with tweets of original journal content garnering the greatest response, according to an article published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website until August 20, 2016.

In the article "An Academic Healthcare Twitter Account: The Mayo Clinic Experience," R. Jay Widmer, MD, PhD, and coauthors, Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education (Rochester, MN), present data describing the gender and geographic distribution of their Twitter account's followers. The authors analyzed the number of retweets, replies, favorites, engagements, and other interactions for their account using Sprinkler and Twitter Analytics.

A survey of the participating Mayo Clinic cardiologists completed before initiating the Twitter account showed that less than 25% felt connected to colleagues outside their own institution, and nearly 85% viewed social media as a deterrent to productivity and a distraction at work.

"As clinicians become more web-savvy, Twitter may serve a useful purpose to suggest interesting, relevant articles and conferences to those who struggle with time constraints," says Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.