scholarly journals Attitudes of the Public to Receiving Medical Care during Emergencies through Remote Physician–Patient Communications

Author(s):  
Matilda Hamlin ◽  
Steinn Steingrimsson ◽  
Itzhak Cohen ◽  
Victor Bero ◽  
Avishay Bar-Tl ◽  
...  

Providing health services through remote communications for sub-acute health issues during emergencies may help reduce the burden of the health care system and increase availability of care. This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of the public towards receiving medical services and providing medical information through remote communication in times of emergencies. During the pandemic outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), pandemic outbreak, 507 participants answered a structured online survey, rating their mean willingness to receive medical care and provide medical information, on a four-point Likert scale. Furthermore, demographic characteristics, social media use, and trust in data protection was collected. The mean willingness to receive medical services was 3.1 ± 0.6 and the mean willingness to provide medical information was 3.0 ± 0.7, with a strong significant correlation between the two (r = 0.76). The multiple regression model identified higher trust in data protection, level of education, and social media use as statistically significant predictors for a higher willingness to receive medical information while the first two predicted willingness to provide information. The findings suggest an overall positive attitude to receive medical care through remote communications.

Author(s):  
Shuang Ling ◽  
Shan Gao ◽  
Wenhui Liu

Despite the expectation that social media use in the public sector contributes to enhancing government's transparency, few studies have been investigated whether social media use actually leads to more disclosure during environmental incidents in practice and how social media influence local governments and their officials' information disclosure. In this article, we model information disclosure during environmental incidents as an evolutionary game process between the central government and local government in social media context, and examine the internal mechanism that how social media influence the progress of information disclosure during environmental incidents. The findings indicate that social media plays an active constructive role in central-local government game relations. Specific- ally, social media can provides an efficient information channels for the central government supervise regional officials in environmental incidents, and thus improves its supervision efficiency, and it also provides an important means for internet mobilization and online-offline interaction by encouraging the public exchange information and express their views, and in turn forces local governments and their officials tend to disclosure ahead.


Author(s):  
Guido Lang ◽  
Raquel Benbunan-Fich

Recent disasters highlight the importance of social media supporting critical information gathering and dissemination efforts by members of the public. Given that disasters pose unique challenges and social media are evolving rapidly, how can one compare the effectiveness of social media in different disaster situations? Drawing from prior work on e-participation, this paper proposes a novel framework for social media use based on four key modules: selection, facilitation, deliberation, and aggregation. A comparative analysis of social media use following a man-made disaster (the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy) and during a natural disaster (the 2009 Britain blizzard) exemplifies the value of the proposed framework. Future research can build on and leverage the present work by analyzing and incorporating additional cases on the use of social media in disaster situations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 532-537
Author(s):  
Chris Jones

Social media use on behalf of ambulance services by paramedics, student paramedics and ancillary staff—‘corporate tweeting’, as it has become known—has in recent times been the subject of much debate in the paramedic profession. It has been argued that social media use is an unstoppable tide and a necessary means of imparting information to members of the public about the work the ambulance service performs. Conversely, others have argued that by tweeting about their patients, the ambulance service is breaching a fundamental code of professional ethics due to the use of confidential patient data. This article explores the UK legal framework of privacy and confidence in the healthcare context, from a human rights perspective, and seeks to demonstrate that some corporate tweeting has breached not only ethical standards, but may also have crossed the line into unlawfulness owing to the public nature of the organisations involved, and their legal duty to protect the human rights of their service users.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. e195-e199
Author(s):  
Arjun Watane ◽  
Hasenin Al-khersan ◽  
Meghana Kalavar ◽  
Bilal Ahmed ◽  
Michael Venincasa ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective To assess ophthalmology trainees' self-reported use of and attitudes toward social media. Methods An online survey was distributed by email to ophthalmology residency applicants of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute between September 2016 and January 2020. Results Of the 1,688 email recipients, the survey was filled by 208 ophthalmology trainees (12.3%). Nearly all trainees reported using social media for personal purposes (92.3%), while less than half used social media for professional purposes (43.4%). There were mixed sentiments regarding the impact of social media on the patient–physician relationship, with the majority feeling that it challenges a physician's authority (55.2%) but also empowers the patient (57.5%) and encourages shared care (92.8%). Twenty-five percent of trainees had reviewed professional social media guidelines, and most rated the quality of medical information on social media as “poor” (60.9%). There were low rates of trainees looking up patients (13.8%), providing their account information to patients (1.5%), responding to patients' messages (2.6%), following patients' accounts (2.6%), and being followed by patients (2.6%). Conclusion The majority of ophthalmology trainees are active on social media. As these trainees enter practice, ophthalmology will likely see a rise in social media use. Training programs should consider a formal social media policy that is shared with all trainees as part of their education.


10.2196/19684 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. e19684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojing Li ◽  
Qinliang Liu

Background Since its outbreak in January 2020, COVID-19 has quickly spread worldwide and has become a global pandemic. Social media platforms have been recognized as important tools for health-promoting practices in public health, and the use of social media is widespread among the public. However, little is known about the effects of social media use on health promotion during a pandemic such as COVID-19. Objective In this study, we aimed to explore the predictive role of social media use on public preventive behaviors in China during the COVID-19 pandemic and how disease knowledge and eHealth literacy moderated the relationship between social media use and preventive behaviors. Methods A national web-based cross-sectional survey was conducted by a proportionate probability sampling among 802 Chinese internet users (“netizens”) in February 2020. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and hierarchical multiple regressions were employed to examine and explore the relationships among all the variables. Results Almost half the 802 study participants were male (416, 51.9%), and the average age of the participants was 32.65 years. Most of the 802 participants had high education levels (624, 77.7%), had high income >¥5000 (US $736.29) (525, 65.3%), were married (496, 61.8%), and were in good health (486, 60.6%). The average time of social media use was approximately 2 to 3 hours per day (mean 2.34 hours, SD 1.11), and the most frequently used media types were public social media (mean score 4.49/5, SD 0.78) and aggregated social media (mean score 4.07/5, SD 1.07). Social media use frequency (β=.20, P<.001) rather than time significantly predicted preventive behaviors for COVID-19. Respondents were also equipped with high levels of disease knowledge (mean score 8.15/10, SD 1.43) and eHealth literacy (mean score 3.79/5, SD 0.59). Disease knowledge (β=.11, P=.001) and eHealth literacy (β=.27, P<.001) were also significant predictors of preventive behaviors. Furthermore, eHealth literacy (P=.038) and disease knowledge (P=.03) positively moderated the relationship between social media use frequency and preventive behaviors, while eHealth literacy (β=.07) affected this relationship positively and disease knowledge (β=–.07) affected it negatively. Different social media types differed in predicting an individual’s preventive behaviors for COVID-19. Aggregated social media (β=.22, P<.001) was the best predictor, followed by public social media (β=.14, P<.001) and professional social media (β=.11, P=.002). However, official social media (β=.02, P=.597) was an insignificant predictor. Conclusions Social media is an effective tool to promote behaviors to prevent COVID-19 among the public. Health literacy is essential for promotion of individual health and influences the extent to which the public engages in preventive behaviors during a pandemic. Our results not only enrich the theoretical paradigm of public health management and health communication but also have practical implications in pandemic control for China and other countries.


SCRIPT-ed ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Custers ◽  
Simone van der Hof ◽  
Bart Schermer ◽  
Sandra Appleby-Arnold ◽  
Noellie Brockdorff

Author(s):  
Guido Lang ◽  
Raquel Benbunan-Fich

Recent disasters highlight the importance of social media supporting critical information gathering and dissemination efforts by members of the public. Given that disasters pose unique challenges and social media are evolving rapidly, how can one compare the effectiveness of social media in different disaster situations? Drawing from prior work on e-participation, this article proposes a novel framework for social media use based on four key modules: selection, facilitation, deliberation, and aggregation. A comparative analysis of social media use following a man-made disaster (the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy) and during a natural disaster (the 2009 Britain blizzard) exemplifies the value of the proposed framework. Future research can build on and leverage the present work by analyzing and incorporating additional cases on the use of social media in disaster situations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhan Khan ◽  
Xiangyun Si ◽  
Kashif Ullah Khan

Abstract The study aims to reveal the role of social media and its influence on information sharing within public organizations and emphasis on the distribution affordance to facilitate information processes. Existing literature emphasized different aspects of social media in the public sector to promote the relationship between government and citizens or provide better public service, for example, innovation, policies, openness, and communication. However, there is a wide gap in the literature to investigate social media use and information sharing within public organizations. The current study tries to accomplish the goal by conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 employees in public organizations in Chaohu city, China and applying content analysis on the interviews. Despite the existing literature, the targeted group for this study is divided into three levels (i) senior-level, (ii) middle-level, and (iii) junior-level employees to get a better view of social media. The study is based on grounded theory for coding analysis. We provide an overview of social media use within Chinese public organizations and discuss five social media affordances involved in the public organizations. Finally, we provide the implications, limitations, recommendation, and future research of this research area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahar S. Othman ◽  
Abeer Alsuwaidi ◽  
Rafal Aseel ◽  
Reema Alotaibi ◽  
Reem Bablgoom ◽  
...  

Abstract BackgroundThe 2019 Coronavirus Disease Pandemic (COVID-19) is a worldwide global epidemic. Although acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination will be a critical step in combating the pandemic, achieving high uptake will be difficult, and potentially made more difficult by social media misinformation. This study aimed to examine the association between social media use and acceptance of receiving COVID-19 vaccine among the general population in Saudi Arabia.MethodologyA cross-sectional study was conducted from June 17 to June 19, 2021 among 504 participants of the general population in Saudi Arabia. The data were collected using a three-part online questionnaire (sociodemographic characteristics, medical and vaccination history, pattern of social media use). ResultsAmong 504 participants who completed the survey, 477 participants were acceptant of the vaccine and 27 were non-accepting. A total of 335 individuals had already received the vaccine, 142 were willing to receive the vaccine and 27 were unwilling. One hundred and thirty participants denied using social media for COVID-19 news. Four factors were found to be significant in influencing vaccine acceptance in univariate analysis: having a chronic condition, believing that infertility is a side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, being concerned about a serious side effect from the vaccine and basing the decision to be vaccinated on social media information. Two of these factors fell away on multivariate analysis: basing the decision on social media information and a belief that vaccination causes infertility, suggesting that the associations are dependent on other factors.Conclusion‏In conclusion, there was no significant independent relationship between social media usage and people's willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.


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