Dr. Johnston and colleagues at Duke University presented work that adds insight into the growing interest regarding the utilization of social media (SoMe) in academic medicine. The academic urology community has a particularly robust SoMe presence (>70% of AUA members have a SoMe account), making this presentation highly relevant.
The investigators sought to characterize the usage of Twitter and Facebook among ACGME-accredited urology residency programs in the United States. In addition, they studied whether the presence of a SoMe account or SoMe activity correlates with program rankings (i.e. Doximity reputation ranking and U.S. News & World Report rankings and score).
Of the 134 residency programs that were identified, 79 (59%) had a SoMe account. Of these, 53% had only a Twitter account, and 10% only used Facebook (Figure 1). Interestingly, no programs in the Northeastern AUA section had a Facebook account (Figure 2). Presence of a Twitter account or Facebook account were both significantly associated with more favorable Doximity reputation ranking and with U.S. News & World Report score (but not rank). Regarding SoMe activity, a higher number of tweets was associated with a more favorable Doximity ranking and U.S. News & World Report score (Table 1). The number of Facebook followers was not significantly associated with any rankings.
These findings underscore the importance of SoMe usage by academic urology programs. In addition to the established advantages afforded by SoMe in the dissemination of scientific publications, it is clear that higher utilization of SoMe accounts is associated with highly regarded urology residency programs. Dr. Johnston also pointed out that the inclusion of urology faculty and urology resident SoMe activity would be of great interest in further characterizing the relationship between SoMe usage and urology program reputation.
Figure 1. ACGME-accredited urology residency programs with a Twitter and/or Facebook account (n=79/134).
Figure 2. ACGME-accredited urology residency programs with a Twitter (blue) or Facebook (purple) account by AUA section.
Table 1. Correlation between social media activity (i.e. number of tweets and followers) and urology residency program ranking.
- Correlation between social media activity and Doximity reputation ranking.
- Correlation between social media activity and U.S. News and World score.
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Presented by: Ashley Johnston, MD, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
Co-authors: Rohit Tekwani, Jonathan Routh, Andrew Peterson, Judd Moul, Michael Ferrandino, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
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