Chest
Original Research: Practice Management and AdministrationBuilding Community Through a #pulmcc Twitter Chat to Advocate for Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep
Section snippets
Methods
The Twitter chats were launched by the CHEST social media team in December 2013. A searchable hashtag (#pulmcc) was created to allow users to follow and find the tweets in the chat and was registered online with Symplur, LLC. Topics were chosen by this team in advance and when possible were timed around current issues and advocacy months. Prior to each chat, a short 2- to 3-paragraph blog was written that listed the rationale for the chat, listed 3 to 4 open-ended topics to be discussed, and
Results
Since the first #pulmcc Twitter chat on December 19, 2013, there have been 12 #pulmcc Twitter chats (Table 2). The twelve 1-h Twitter chats generated 4,212 tweets by 418 unique participants and resulted in 9,361,519 impressions. However, since the first Twitter chat, there have been a total of 13,400 tweets using the #pulmcc hashtag by 2,405 participants, resulting in 33,101,953 impressions, reflecting a significant amount of Tweets using the hashtag outside of the chats (Fig 1).
The chats were
Discussion
Twitter chats can be a powerful tool for the widespread engagement of a medical audience. In this series of hour-long Twitter chats, > 400 participants generated > 4,000 tweets, resulting in > 9 million impressions of this hashtag. Almost one-third of the participants in the chats were return participants, and most of the return participants were health-care providers. Hosting Twitter chats during annual meetings and enlisting the participation of health-care providers during these meetings may
Acknowledgments
Author contributions: C. L. C. is the corresponding author and assumes full responsibility for the integrity of the submission as a whole, from inception to published article. C. L. C., K. B., and P. R. conceived and designed the study. K. B. and C. L. C. collected the data. C. L. C., K. B., and P. R. performed data analysis and interpretation. C. L. C. drafted the article, and K. B. and P. R. performed critical revision of the article. All authors read and approved the final submission of this
References (18)
- et al.
The intelligent use of digital tools and social media in practice management
Chest
(2014) - et al.
Nursing and Twitter: creating an online community using hashtags
Collegian
(2014) - et al.
Twitter as a tool for communication and knowledge exchange in academic medicine: a guide for skeptics and novices
Med Teach
(2015) - Twitter. The Twitter glossary. https://support.twitter.com/articles/166337. Accessed January...
- et al.
The times they are a-changin’: academia, social media and the JGIM twitter journal club
J Gen Intern Med
(2014) - et al.
Physicians who use social media and other internet-based communication technologies
J Am Med Inform Assoc
(2012) - et al.
Social media use in the United States: implications for health communication
J Med Internet Res
(2009) - Diederichs M. How to run a Twitter chat: the complete guide [blog]. September 8, 2016....
- Sayer S. 5 Practical tips for running a successful Twitter chat (and why you should). November 10, 2016....
Cited by (0)
FUNDING/SUPPORT: The authors have reported to CHEST that no funding was received for this study.