Twitter as a powerful tool for communication between pain physicians during COVID-19 pandemic

Twitter Analysis of Health Care Workers' Sentiment and Discourse Regarding Post-COVID-19 Condition in Children and Young People: Mixed Methods Study

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant global impact, with millions of cases and deaths. Research highlights the persistence of symptoms over time (post-COVID-19 condition), a situation of particular concern in children and young people with symptoms. Social media such as Twitter (subsequently rebranded as X) could provide valuable information on the impact of the post-COVID-19 condition on this demographic.

OBJECTIVE

With a social media analysis of the discourse surrounding the prevalence of post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people, we aimed to explore the perceptions of health care workers (HCWs) concerning post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people in the United Kingdom between January 2021 and January 2022. This will allow us to contribute to the emerging knowledge on post-COVID-19 condition and identify critical areas and future directions for researchers and policy makers.

METHODS

From a pragmatic paradigm, we used a mixed methods approach. Through discourse, keyword, sentiment, and image analyses, using Pulsar and InfraNodus, we analyzed the discourse about the experience of post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people in the United Kingdom shared on Twitter between January 1, 2021, and January 31, 2022, from a sample of HCWs with Twitter accounts whose biography identifies them as HCWs.

RESULTS

We obtained 300,000 tweets, out of which (after filtering for relevant tweets) we performed an in-depth qualitative sample analysis of 2588 tweets. The HCWs were responsive to announcements issued by the authorities regarding the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The most frequent sentiment expressed was negative. The main themes were uncertainty about the future, policies and regulations, managing and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people, vaccination, using Twitter to share scientific literature and management strategies, and clinical and personal experiences.

CONCLUSIONS

The perceptions described on Twitter by HCWs concerning the presence of the post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people appear to be a relevant and timely issue and responsive to the declarations and guidelines issued by health authorities over time. We recommend further support and training strategies for health workers and school staff regarding the manifestations and treatment of children and young people with post-COVID-19 condition.

Online on the frontline: A longitudinal social media analysis of UK healthcare workers' attitudes to COVID-19 vaccines using the 5C framework

This paper explores vaccine hesitancy among healthcare workers (HCWs) in the UK, where different COVID-19 vaccines were being rolled out through a national vaccination campaign from 2020 to 2022, consisting of a first and second dose programme. Through a mixed-method approach using qualitative discourse analysis and network analysis of Twitter data, we assessed HCW perceptions and views about the administration and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom (UK). We were also interested in exploring HCWs' personal experiences and attitudes towards taking COVID-19 vaccines themselves. We drew upon sociology, ethics, communication studies and used research methods concentrating on social media and media analysis. By employing the '5C framework' of 'confidence, complacency, constraints, calculation, and collective responsibility' we evaluated a longitudinal selection of tweets to capture relevant factors driving vaccination views and behaviours among HCWs. We found differing positions expressed about COVID-19 vaccines and policy during the first dose compared with the second, through a drop in confidence compounded by supply and access issues, as well the news of a vaccine mandate for HCWs by the UK government in 2021. HCWs asked calculation questions to the community or brought forward competing pieces of information about vaccine policy and guidelines. Constraint levels in access issues were noted, especially for those with work and caregiving responsibilities, and student nurses found they did not have equal vaccination access. HCWs also displayed collective responsibility on social platforms to both encourage vaccination and express concerns through the organisation of social action against vaccine mandates.

5-Year Analysis of Twitter Usage Among Physicians: 2016-2020 (Preprint)

Background

Physicians are increasingly using Twitter as a channel for communicating with colleagues and the public. Identifying physicians on Twitter is difficult due to the varied and imprecise ways that people self-identify themselves on the social media platform. This is the first study to describe a reliable, repeatable methodology for identifying physicians on Twitter. By using this approach, we characterized the longitudinal activity of US physicians on Twitter.

Objective

We aimed to develop a reliable and repeatable methodology for identifying US physicians on Twitter and to characterize their activity on Twitter over 5 years by activity, tweeted topic, and account type.

Methods

In this study, 5 years of Twitter data (2016-2020) were mined for physician accounts. US physicians on Twitter were identified by using a custom-built algorithm to screen for physician identifiers in the Twitter handles, user profiles, and tweeted content. The number of tweets by physician accounts from the 5-year period were counted and analyzed. The top 100 hashtags were identified, categorized into topics, and analyzed.

Results

Approximately 1 trillion tweets were mined to identify 6,399,146 (<0.001%) tweets originating from 39,084 US physician accounts. Over the 5-year period, the number of US physicians tweeting more than doubled (ie, increased by 112%). Across all 5 years, the most popular themes were general health, medical education, and mental health, and in specific years, the number of tweets related to elections (2016 and 2020), Black Lives Matter (2020), and COVID-19 (2020) increased.

Conclusions

Twitter has become an increasingly popular social media platform for US physicians over the past 5 years, and their use of Twitter has evolved to cover a broad range of topics, including science, politics, social activism, and COVID-19. We have developed an accurate, repeatable methodology for identifying US physicians on Twitter and have characterized their activity.

Examination of a Canada-Wide Collaboration Platform for Order Sets: Retrospective Analysis

BACKGROUND

Knowledge translation and dissemination are some of the main challenges that affect evidence-based medicine. Web 2.0 platforms promote the sharing and collaborative development of content. Executable knowledge tools, such as order sets, are a knowledge translation tool whose localization is critical to its effectiveness but a challenge for organizations to develop independently.

OBJECTIVE

This paper describes a Web 2.0 resource, referred to as the collaborative network (TCN), for order set development designed to share executable knowledge (order sets). This paper also analyzes the scope of its use, describes its use through network analysis, and examines the provision and use of order sets in the platform by organizational size.

METHODS

Data were collected from Think Research's TxConnect platform. We measured interorganization sharing across Canadian hospitals using descriptive statistics. A weighted chi-square analysis was used to evaluate institutional size to share volumes based on institution size, with post hoc Cramer V score to measure the strength of association.

RESULTS

TCN consisted of 12,495 order sets across 683 diagnoses or processes. Between January 2010 and March 2015, a total of 131 health care organizations representing 360 hospitals in Canada downloaded order sets 105,496 times. Order sets related to acute coronary syndrome, analgesia, and venous thromboembolism were most commonly shared. COVID-19 order sets were among the most actively shared, adjusting for order set lifetime. A weighted chi-square analysis showed nonrandom downloading behavior (P<.001), with medium-sized institutions downloading content from larger institutions acting as the most significant driver of this variance (chi-gram=124.70).

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have described and analyzed a Web 2.0 platform for the sharing of order set content with significant network activity. The robust use of TCN to access customized order sets reflects its value as a resource for health care organizations when they develop or update their own order sets.

Digital citizens' feelings in national #Covid 19 campaigns in Spain

BACKGROUND

In 2020 Spain launched an official campaign, #EsteVirusLoParamosUnidos, aimed at uniting the entire country through citizen cooperation, in order to combat Covid-19. The objective of this research has been to analyse how this Twitter campaign revealed the feelings expressed by Spanish citizens.

METHODS

The research is based on a composite design that triangulates, from a theoretical model, a quantitative analysis and a qualitative analysis.

RESULTS

Of the 7,357 tweets in the sample, 72.32% were found to be retweets. Four content families were extracted which relate to politics, education, messages to society and the defence of occupational groups. The feelings expressed ranged from those of unity, admiration and support to those of discontent and criticism of issues regarding the health situation.

CONCLUSIONS

The development of networked socio-political and technical measures, which enabled citizen participation, facilitated the development of new patterns of interaction between national or regional governments and digital citizens. This increased citizens' possibilities of influencing the public agenda and, therefore, strengthening citizen engagement regarding specific situations.

Predicting Geolocation of Tweets: Using Combination of CNN and BiLSTM

Twitter is one of the most popular micro-blogging and social networking platforms where users post their opinions, preferences, activities, thoughts, views, etc., in form of tweets within the limit of 280 characters. In order to study and analyse the social behavior and activities of a user across a region, it becomes necessary to identify the location of the tweet. This paper aims to predict geolocation of real-time tweets at the city level collected for a period of 30 days by using a combination of convolutional neural network and a bidirectional long short-term memory by extracting features within the tweets and features associated with the tweets. We have also compared our results with previous baseline models and the findings of our experiment show a significant improvement over baselines methods achieving an accuracy of 92.6 with a median error of 22.4 km at city level prediction.

Chronic Pain Management during the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has led caregivers to modify patient healthcare, with a high impact on patients with chronic pain.

AIMS

To map recommendations for the management of chronic pain patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and propose a workflow for the management of these patients.

DESIGN

This was a scoping review.

METHODS

The databases searched were PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and LILACS. The studies were examined by two independent reviewers. The disagreements between reviewers were resolved through discussion or with a third reviewer.

RESULTS

We presented the results in the form of a table, a workflow, and a narrative summary. The search resulted in 13 studies selected for full reading, including one consensus, five guidance documents, two expert panels, one joint statement, two educational flyers, and two free comments. We considered new technologies, including telemedicine. Each pain service needs to establish a screening model, classifying patients according to corresponding severity. Particular attention should be given to patients who use opioids and are at risk of misusing them. Nonpharmacological approaches and pain education should be maintained, considering the use of telehealth.

CONCLUSIONS

Recommendations for the management of chronic pain during COVID-19 include adjustments to the patient care model. The workflow proposes the use of telemedicine, screening for painful intensity, and the use of color-signaled intervention packages according to severity (green, yellow, and red).

Tweets by People With Arthritis During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Content and Sentiment Analysis

BACKGROUND

Emerging evidence suggests that people with arthritis are reporting increased physical pain and psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, Twitter's daily usage has surged by 23% throughout the pandemic period, presenting a unique opportunity to assess the content and sentiment of tweets. Individuals with arthritis use Twitter to communicate with peers, and to receive up-to-date information from health professionals and services about novel therapies and management techniques.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this research was to identify proxy topics of importance for individuals with arthritis during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to explore the emotional context of tweets by people with arthritis during the early phase of the pandemic.

METHODS

From March 20 to April 20, 2020, publicly available tweets posted in English and with hashtag combinations related to arthritis and COVID-19 were extracted retrospectively from Twitter. Content analysis was used to identify common themes within tweets, and sentiment analysis was used to examine positive and negative emotions in themes to understand the COVID-19 experiences of people with arthritis.

RESULTS

In total, 149 tweets were analyzed. The majority of tweeters were female and were from the United States. Tweeters reported a range of arthritis conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and psoriatic arthritis. Seven themes were identified: health care experiences, personal stories, links to relevant blogs, discussion of arthritis-related symptoms, advice sharing, messages of positivity, and stay-at-home messaging. Sentiment analysis demonstrated marked anxiety around medication shortages, increased physical symptom burden, and strong desire for trustworthy information and emotional connection.

CONCLUSIONS

Tweets by people with arthritis highlight the multitude of concurrent concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding these concerns, which include heightened physical and psychological symptoms in the context of treatment misinformation, may assist clinicians to provide person-centered care during this time of great health uncertainty.

Social Networks' Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain: Health Media vs. Healthcare Professionals

An increased use of social networks is one of the most far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aside from the traditional media, as the main drivers of social communication in crisis situations, individual profiles have emerged supported by social networks, which have had a similar impact to the more specialized communication media. This is the hypothesis of the research presented, which is focused on health communication and based on a virtual ethnography methodology with the use of social metrics. The aim is to understand the relationship established between the population in general and digital media in particular through the measurement of engagement. In this regard, a comparative study was carried out that describes this phenomenon over a period of six months on three social networks: YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, with a sample composed of specialized health media versus healthcare professionals. The results point to a new communications model that opens up a new space for agents whose content has a degree of engagement comparable to and even exceeding that of digital media specialized in health communication. The conclusions show that the crisis of the pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the communication sector, creating new challenges for the communication industry, media professionals, and higher education institutions related to market demands.