APMA News - May/June 2018 - 13

The Importance of Social Media Adoption in Podiatry: Can We Improve?
By Christopher R. Hood Jr., DPM, and Jeffrey D. Lehrman, DPM
Dubbed "medicine 2.0" or "health 2.0," health information
disseminated over various web and social media outlets1 is
here to stay.
In this article, we examine Twitter, in particular, to better
understand how it has been adopted within the medical community in general, and the podiatry community specifically.
Twitter has grown rapidly since its inception in 2006.2 Between
June 2008 and 2009, worldwide Twitter use grew 1,460 percent with an estimated 30 million active monthly users by
2010.1,3 Twitter continues to grow, with 336 million monthly
users as of 2018.3
This large network of users allows information to be distributed worldwide through tweeting, retweeting, and hashtag
use. It has been a boon for physicians and professional organizations in communicating with patient audiences. APMA,
for example, has nearly 40,000 followers on Twitter, primarily members of the public. Because many of those users retweet
or share APMA's content, Twitter ultimately allows APMA to
reach an audience of nearly 8.6 million annually with the
health-care information it disseminates. But the growth and
popularity of Twitter have also become key in how doctors
and medical societies find and spread information and ideas.1
From 2010 to 2011, one study noted social media use by
doctors increased from 41 percent to 90 percent.4 The medical and scientific communities have jumped aboard the Twitter
bandwagon, with a study showing 3,725 of 3,812 scientific/
medical journals having Twitter accounts.5
One study conducted within the urology specialty surveyed
physicians about the perceived utility of Twitter for various ac-

tivities, and respondents (n=234) noted the benefit of
Twitter for networking (97 percent), dissemination of
information (97 percent), remote conference participation (79 percent), advocacy (73 percent), and research (72
percent).6 Because of these benefits, it is important for physicians and medical societies to have a grasp on the value of social media and to adopt it as they are able.
McGowan et al (2012) found that physicians use social media platforms such as Twitter to find, search, and contribute
knowledge, while others have demonstrated that physicians use
Twitter as a form of professional communication and growth.2
Podiatry, however, seems to be lagging behind other
specialties in its adoption of this channel. In an attempt to
evaluate how the podiatry community is using social media
professionally, we performed two retrospective reviews between 2016 and 2017 and presented them at podiatric medical conferences.*
The first study took a general look at how our professional
organizations are using Twitter. Our methodology included a
Google and Twitter search of "X podiatric medical association
± Twitter," with X being substituted for each of the 50 states
plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The full list of
states; their Twitter handles; and the number of tweets, followers, and following members was reported. (See Table 1 on page
14.) Furthermore, the overall use of social media platforms
was reviewed and reported to evaluate integration of modalities.
(See Table 2 on page 15.) The number of state podiatric association Twitter accounts was a mere 14.

1. Daniel Scanfeld, Vanessa Scanfield, "Dissemination of health information through social networks: Twitter and antibiotics,"
American Journal of Infection Control 38 (2010): 182-188.
2. Alexander Djuricich, Janine Zee-Cheng, "Live tweeting in medicine: 'tweeting the meeting'." International Review of Psychiatry 27
(2015): 133-139.
3. Michelle Castillo, Julia Boorstin, "Twitter Shares Jump after Earnings Beat," CNBC, April 25, 2018, accessed May 7, 2018, https://
www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/twitter-earnings-q1-2018.html.
4. Daniel George, Liza Rovniak, Jennifer Kraschnewski, "Dangers and
opportunities for social media in medicine," Clinical Obstetrics and
Gynecology 56 (2013): 453-62.
5. Austin Chiang, "How social media impacts public health," Medical
Practice Insider (2014).

6. Hendrik Borgmann, Sasha Dewitt, Igor Tsaur, Axel Haferkamp,
Stacy Loeb, "Novel survey disseminated through Twitter supports
its utility for networking, disseminating research, advocacy, clinical practice and other professional goals," Journal of the Canadian
Urological Association 9 (2015): E713-E717.

continued on page 14

* An abridged version of this work was previously presented in post-

er format at the American Podiatric Medical Association Annual Scientific Meeting (July 2017) and Goldfarb Clinical Conference (November 2017):
* Christopher Hood, Jeffrey Lehrman, "Twitter Use at the APMA
Annual Scientific Meeting" (poster presentation, APMA Annual
Scientific Meeting, Nashville, TN, July 27-30, 2017).
* Christopher Hood, Jeffrey Lehrman, "Podiatric State Association Adoption of Twitter-Where Are We?" (poster presentation, Goldfarb Clinical Conference, November 10-12, 2017).
APMA News May/June 2018

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