63 Assessing the Quality and Reliability of Patient Information Regarding First-aid Burn Care on Youtube
Abstract Introduction Social media has increasingly become the first point of reference for patients regarding medical information. This study assesses the quality and reliability of patient information available on YouTube regarding First-Aid for Burn Care. Methods Using Google Trends, “burn treatment” was identified as the most common term to likely be used to seek out information regarding first-aid treatment of burns. The terms “burn treatment” was searched on YouTube within Internet Explorer on September 18, 2019. Results were filtered by view count and the first 6 pages of results, top 120 videos were reviewed, excluding duplicates, non-English language videos, and videos unrelated to first-aid burn care. Videos were analyzed by two independent reviewers and descriptive statistics. Videos were also rated for information reliability and quality using both the Modified DISCERN (MD) tool (1 = low, 5 = high) and the Global Quality Scale (GQS) (1 = poor, 5 = excellent). Results Overall 67% of the videos were classified as informative with 15% constituting personal experience, the remainder of which were misleading. The physicians had a lower number of mean views per video at 140k compared to 210k from non experts. Physician group constituted 20.6% of all speakers in the video, with NP/PA constituting 2.9%. The GQS mean was 2, with physicians scoring slightly higher at 2.3, NP/PA scoring 3, and the remainder of the speakers scoring lowest at 1.8. The Modified discern score mean was 2.0. Conclusions Overall the burn care professionals inclusion physician, nursing and physician assistants constituted a minority of the speakers present. 76% were by other professionals who don’t deliver care inside the hospital setting. The physicians had lower number of views when compared to non experts. However, burn care professionals scored higher on the modified discern and the GQS compared to non-experts. The overall quality of all videos was low across the board with a modified discern of 2 out of 5. There is an opportunity to improve resources available to our patients from the burn care professional stand point to increase online presence. Applicability of Research to Practice The quality of videos reviewed was poor, and demonstrated an opportunity for improvement of resources available to our patients online.