This study is the first to evaluate the characteristics, demographics, and utilization patterns of SM use in a professional manner by neurosurgical oncologists. Our study found that most neurosurgical oncologists who use SM enjoy it, while some did describe negative experiences with SM use. Being younger than 50 years was found to be associated with SM use by neurosurgical oncologists, while among SM users a higher number of followers on social media was noted to be associated with positive outcomes, specifically more patient referrals. Having a larger number of followers on SM was noted to be associated with practicing in an academic setting, the use of Twitter, and posting on SM about interesting cases, upcoming events, and one’s own research publications.
Our study found that Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter were commonly used SM platforms among neurosurgical oncologists. These platforms have been reported to be increasingly popular with clinicians across multiple specialties, including in neurosurgery[7, 10, 11]. Most of our survey respondents were in academic practice and based in North America, which reflects the membership demographics of the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Tumors. Our findings show that the majority of neurosurgical oncologists who use SM professionally started doing so within the last 5 years. This reflects the exponential adoption of SM in recent years by neurosurgeons, patients, and trainees as has been previously described in the literature[2, 4, 12]. Most respondents reported only making 0–1 SM posts per week, however 39.3% reported one thousand or more total followers on their SM platforms. Our study investigated factors associated with neurosurgical oncologists having 1000 followers or more on their SM platforms. Our analysis found that practicing in academics, utilizing Twitter, and posting on SM with a variety of content including interesting surgical cases, upcoming academic events, and about research projects that one has published are all associated with having a larger (1000 or more) number of followers on SM. This provides additional insight for neurosurgical oncologists to grow their professional social media presence and contributes to similar findings reported for other medical specialties[13–15].
Our study found that younger age, particularly younger than 50 years, was associated with SM use by neurosurgical oncologists. Though all demographics are increasingly using SM, the highest adopters of SM use continue to be younger professionals[4, 7, 16]. The dissemination of research and promoting academic events were noted to be popular topics for SM platform posts by our respondents. This aligns with the growing significance of SM platforms for neurosurgical trainee education and research dissemination[8, 17, 18]. Several studies have described the benefits of SM use for increasing scientific engagement and expanding the online reach of academic journals[3, 6, 8, 19]. In addition, our study found that having a higher number of followers on SM was associated with positive outcomes, particularly new patient referrals. As more patients turn to SM for emotional support and health information, this finding adds to the growing body of literature associating a larger SM presence for clinicians with an overall increase in patient engagement[20–27].
Study Limitations
This study has several limitations. Our survey population was limited to the membership of one academic organization (AANS/CNS Joint Section on Tumors) and thus may exhibit a bias in responses for academic neurosurgeons based in North America. The relatively sparse number of responses to our survey limits the generalizability of our results. Some of our study questions had short answer responses which were not completed by most of the survey respondents and we excluded that qualitative data from our analysis in this study.