Instagram is a social media platform owned by Meta Platforms that allows users to share photos and videos, apply filters, and connect with friends and followers.
Key Features Feed Posts: Share photos and videos that stay on the user's profile. Stories: Temporary content that disappears after 24 hours. Reels: Short, creative videos similar to TikTok. Direct Messages (DMs): Private communication between users. Explore: Discover new content and accounts based on personal interests. Recent Updates (as of August 2024) Text Editor for Photos: Users can now add text directly to images within the app, without needing external tools. Photo-on-Photo Feature: Users can overlay one photo on another like a sticker, with customizable shapes such as squares, circles, hearts, or stars.
Neurosurgery evolves with new techniques and technologies and relies heavily on high-quality education and training. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have become integral to this training. These platforms enable the sharing of surgical experiences, fostering global knowledge-sharing and collaboration among neurosurgeons. Virtual conferences and courses are accessible, enhancing learning regardless of location. While these networks offer real-time communication and collaborative opportunities, they also pose challenges like the spread of misinformation and potential distractions. According to the PICO format, the target population (P) for this paper are medical students, neurosurgical residents, and consultants on the role of social media (I) in neurosurgery among Low-Middle income countries (C) with the main outcome to understanding the collaborative domain of learning 1)
Social media outlets such as Instagram have recently become a popular tool for medical professionals to disseminate medical information to a large public audience.
Social media use continues to gain momentum in both the general public and in academic medicine. When the Pew Research Center began tracking social media statistics in 2005, 5% of Americans were technology adopters, whereas 72% of the public currently uses some variation of social media (eg, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram).
A total of 206 (148 orthopedic, 58 neurosurgery trained) spine surgeons were included. Spine surgeon ratings and demographics data from 3 physician rating websites (Healthgrades.com [HG], Vitals.com, Google.com [G]) were collected in November 2019. Using the first 10 search results from G we then identified if the surgeons had publicly accessible Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (IG) accounts.
Results: The mean age of the cohort was 54.3 years (±9.40 years), and 28.2% had one form of publicly accessible SM. Having any SM was significantly correlated with higher scores on HG and G. An IG account was associated with significantly higher scores on all 3 platforms, and having a Facebook account correlated with significantly higher scores on HG in multivariate analysis. An office wait time between 16 and 30 minutes and >30 minutes was associated with worse scores on all 3 platforms (all P < 0.05). An academic practice was associated with higher scores on all 3 platforms (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: A shorter office wait time and an academic setting practice are associated with higher patient satisfaction scores on all 3 physician review websites. Accessible SM accounts are also associated with higher ratings on physician review websites, particularly IG 2).