IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijhplm/v37y2022i2p1075-1088.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Benefits and harms of patient stories on social media from the perspective of healthcare providers and administrators in Ontario

Author

Listed:
  • Moutasem A. Zakkar
  • Craig R. Janes
  • Samantha B. Meyer

Abstract

There has been a growing use of social media by patients to share their healthcare experiences and produce information that can be helpful to other patients seeking healthcare services. These stories can reveal issues in healthcare quality. However, faced with the inherent risks of social media, healthcare providers have been skeptical about the value of these stories, and many healthcare systems have adopted restrictive and protective policies to control the use of social media by healthcare providers. This study explores healthcare providers' and administrators' perspectives on patient stories on social media and whether they can use the stories to evaluate healthcare experiences. Semi‐structured interviews (n = 21) were conducted with healthcare providers and administrators, including physicians, nurses, and quality managers in Ontario, Canada, between April 2018 and May 2019. Inductive and data‐driven thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Several barriers prevent healthcare providers from realizing the benefits of social media, including concerns about the quality of patients' feedback, the professional codes of conduct, and the time and effort required to process these stories. The study findings suggest that cultural changes in the healthcare system might be required to foster the use of social media for healthcare quality improvement and enable the development of a safe patient‐provider communication environment that facilitates the exchange of constructive feedback between the two parties without the fear of legal consequences, breaches of patient privacy, or violation of professional codes of conduct.

Suggested Citation

  • Moutasem A. Zakkar & Craig R. Janes & Samantha B. Meyer, 2022. "Benefits and harms of patient stories on social media from the perspective of healthcare providers and administrators in Ontario," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 1075-1088, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijhplm:v:37:y:2022:i:2:p:1075-1088
    DOI: 10.1002/hpm.3391
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.3391
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hpm.3391?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amy Van Looy, 2016. "Social Media Management," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-319-21990-5, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Louisa Walsh & Nerida Hyett & Nicole Juniper & Chi Li & Sophie Hill, 2022. "The Experiences of Stakeholders Using Social Media as a Tool for Health Service Design and Quality Improvement: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-29, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waldhoff, Kimberly & Vollmar, Bernhard, 2019. "Zur Glaubwürdigkeit von Influencern im Influencer Marketing," PFH Forschungspapiere/Research Papers 2019/02, PFH Private University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen.
    2. A Fronzetti Colladon & B Guardabascio & R Innarella, 2021. "Using social network and semantic analysis to analyze online travel forums and forecast tourism demand," Papers 2105.07727, arXiv.org.
    3. Peuser, Martina, 2018. ""Fake Reviews" im Zeitalter der digitalen Weiterempfehlung: Herausforderungen von gefälschten Online-Bewertungen für Unternehmen und potenzielle Lösungsansätze," PraxisWISSEN Marketing: German Journal of Marketing, AfM – Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Marketing, vol. 3(01/2018), pages 70-79.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijhplm:v:37:y:2022:i:2:p:1075-1088. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0749-6753 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.