Nationwide online social networking for cardiovascular care in Korea using Facebook

Abstract

To examine the use of online social networking for cardiovascular care using Facebook. All posts and comments in a Facebook group between June 2011 and May 2012 were reviewed, and a survey was conducted. A total of 298 members participated. Of the 277 wall posts, 26.7% were question posts requesting rapid replies, and 50.5% were interesting cases shared with other members. The median response time for the question posts was 16 min (IQR 8-47), which tended to decrease as more members joined the group. Many members (37.4%) accessed the group more than once a day, and more than half (64%) monitored the group posts in real time with automatic notifications of new posts. Most members expressed confidence in the content posted. Facebook enables online social networking between physicians in near-real time and appears to be a useful tool for physicians to share clinical experience and request assistance in decision-making.

Keywords: cardiac care; social network.

Figures

Figure 1

Screenshots from the Korean Group of Emergency Cardiovascular Care on Facebook. *Category 1: question posts regarding a difficult case, which requested rapid replies to assist in decision making; category 2: posts discussing interesting and informative cases from previous experience; category 3: educational posts to convey informative knowledge or something; category 4: announcements posts to notify the members of something. †First comment indicate the first reply on a new post.

Figure 2

Number of postings and members per month, and median response time to first comment per month. *The number of members (blue line) is plotted on the secondary y axis.

Figure 3

Survey results according to device used, frequency of connection to the group, automatic notification, and reliability of content (of the total 298 participants, 211 (70.8%) completed the survey).