Social media stethoscope: unraveling how doctors' social media behavior affects patient adherence and treatment outcome

• Published in: Frontiers in public health 2024-09, Vol.12, p.1459536
• Main Authors: Sun, Qian, Tang, Guiyao, Xu, Wenxiao, Zhang, Shaoli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; China; doctor humor; Female; gender bias; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; patient adherence; Patient Compliance - statistics & numerical data; Physician-Patient Relations; Physicians - psychology; Social Media; social media behavior of doctors; Surveys and Questionnaires; Treatment Outcome; Trust
• ISSN: 2296-2565; 2296-2565
• DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1459536

The exposure of the content posted by doctors on social media has the potential to influence how patients perceive and judge doctors. It is necessary to further investigate whether and how the content posted by doctors affects patients' health behaviors and outcomes, as well as to identify the factors that may influence this mechanism. Multi-respondent survey data was collected from 35 doctors and 322 patients in China, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesis model. The findings revealed that doctors posting professional knowledge content on social media positively impacted patient adherence and treatment effectiveness. Conversely, doctors sharing personal life-related content on social media were associated with lower patient adherence and poorer treatment outcome. Moreover, doctor gender and doctor humor moderate the relationship between social media behavior of doctors and patient adherence. Doctors sharing professional knowledge on social media not only fosters trust in physicians but also closely correlates with patient adherence and treatment effectiveness.