Spine Surgeons Social Dilemma: Benefits and Risks of Social Media for Spine Surgery Practice in the 21st Century

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional observational. BACKGROUND: The use of social media by providers can enhance patient education, complement offline information, facilitate patient support, stimulate brand building, and strengthen the organization’s market position. Risks of social media include, but are not limited to, a lack of quality, reliability, misrepresentation of credentials, influence of hidden and overt conflicts of interest, content that may jeopardize patient privacy, HIPAA regulations, and physicians’ credentials and licensure. Physicians’ use of social media may also expose him/her to lawsuits if providing specific medical advice on media platforms. OBJECTIVE: To document the social media presence of a broad cohort of spine surgeons, and to discuss the benefits and risks of a social media presence. METHODS: Cross-sectional observational of 325 Spine Surgeons from 76 institutions across the US. Description statistic and Pearson’s correlation were used to investigate the relationships between the variables. RESULTS: Out of the 325 surgeons, 96% were male with an average age of 51.5 ± 10.7 years and 14.1 ± 9.6 years of experience. The frequency of social media use included 57.2% of surgeons had professional LinkedIn, 17.8% had professional Facebook, and less than 16% had other social media platforms. When combining all platforms together, 64.6% of all surgeons had at least one professional social media platform. 64.0% of these surgeons had no social media activity in the past 90 days, while 19.4% and 10.9% were active once and twice a month, respectively. Surgeon age (P = 0.004), years in practice (P < 0.001), and practice type (P < 0.001) were strongly correlated with social media activity. CONCLUSIONS: Given the scarcity of research on this topic and the novelty of the platforms, social media and online services continue to be utilized at a low level by spine surgeons. Issues regarding the risks of privacy issues with social media users continue to be a concern among medical professionals adopting this technology. This can largely be mitigated with the combination of physician education and informed consent from patients. The ability to connect with patients directly, and provide access to high-quality education and information will be of considerable benefit to our field well into the future.