Chest
Volume 152, Issue 2, August 2017, Pages 402-409
Journal home page for Chest

Original Research: Practice Management and Administration
Building Community Through a #pulmcc Twitter Chat to Advocate for Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep

Part of this article has been presented at the American College of Chest Physicians 2016 Annual Meeting, October 22-26, 2016, Los Angeles, CA.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2017.03.003Get rights and content

Background

Social media sites such as Twitter can significantly enhance education and advocacy efforts. In 2013, the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) launched a Twitter chat series using the hashtag #pulmcc to educate and advocate for topics related to pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine.

Methods

To assess the reach of these chats, we analyzed the metrics using Symplur analytics, and compared data from each chat, as well as participant data.

Results

Since December 19, 2013, there have been 12 Twitter chats: six have been on critical care-related topics, four have been on pulmonary-/sleep-related topics, and two have been conducted during the CHEST annual meeting on more general topics. During these 1-h Twitter chats, there were a total of 4,212 tweets by 418 participants, resulting in 9,361,519 impressions (ie, views). There were similar numbers of participants and tweets in the three categories of Twitter chats, but there was a significantly greater reach during the more general Twitter chats conducted at the CHEST annual meeting, with 1,596,013 ± 126,472 impressions per chat session at these chats, compared with 739,203 ± 73,109 impressions per chat session during the critical care Twitter chats and 621,965 ± 123,933 impressions per chat session in the pulmonary/sleep chats. Seventy-five participants participated in two or more #pulmcc Twitter chats, and the average percent of return participants in each chat was 30% ± 7%. Most of the return participants were health-care providers.

Conclusions

Twitter chats can be a powerful tool for the widespread engagement of a medical audience.

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

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FUNDING/SUPPORT: The authors have reported to CHEST that no funding was received for this study.

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