Abstract
Introduction: Social media is an excellent platform both for sharing knowledge, information exchange and communication for
the healthcare professionals. The new trends in social media have created a variety of opportunity for them both for learning
and professional purposes.
Objectives: To conduct a survey regarding proportion of healthcare professionals utilizing social media for their academic
and professional purposes
Material and Methods: This was a questionnaire based survey. In this study, 750 healthcare professionals were approached
through different social media platforms as well as in hard form. The healthcare professionals were categorized into medical
students, house officers, medical officers, post graduate residents and consultants. Out of these 750 healthcare professional, 512 filled the questionnaire, response rate was 68.3%.
Results: Among 512 participants, 309 (60.4%) were males and 203 (39.6%) were females. Post graduate residents contributed as the maximum participants 199 (38.9%) followed by medical students 93(18.2%). Among them, 125 (24.4%), 214
(41.8%), 101 (19.7%), 34 (6.6%) and 38 (7.4%) were using social media for 1-2 hours, 3-4 hours, 5-6 hours, 7-8 hours and
>8 hours respectively. Maximum participants 369 (71.7%) were using WhatsApp along with other apps, followed by YouTube
which was the most preferred App. Among them, 350 (68.4%) participants agreed that using social media was helpful for
professional purposes, 335 (65.4%) recommended using social media for the professional purposes.
Conclusion: Majority of healthcare professionals utilize social media as professional and learning tool in their academic activities. WhatsApp and YouTube are the two most common modalities of social media utilized by healthcare professionals in
this study. Majority of participants recommended using social media for professional purposes.
Abbreviation: HCPs: Healthcare professionals, PMDC: Pakistan Medical and Dental Council.
Irfanullah Afridi, Iqbal Haider, Dawood Khan, Wisal Ahmad, Osama Sherjeel Khan. (2020) TRENDS AND PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A LEARNING TOOL IN HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS, Journal of Medical Sciences, Volume 28, Issue 3.
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