Knowledge sharing by clinicians using social media: A case study in Ethiopia

Social media is becoming an integral part of medical information dissemination. Health professionals adopt social media for clinical knowledge sharing and for social networking. However, there is no information specifically about use of social media by Ethiopian clinicians: The purpose of this study is to explore the usage of social media by Ethiopian clinicians for clinical knowledge sharing. The data is collected from seven governmental and non-governmental hospitals. Purposive and snow ball sampling technique was employed to select the participants (N = 150); and 109 clinicians participated in the survey. Multiple linear regression analyses was conducted to identify predictors of social media use by clinicians for knowledge sharing. Among 109 social media users 27 (24.8%) have used social media solely for professional knowledge sharing, 30 (27.5%) for individual social networking, 40(36.7%) for both professional knowledge sharing and social networking, and 5 (4.6%) for other purposes. The vast majority of the respondents frequently use more than one social media tool 39.4% (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube). The study shows that clinicians have started to adopt and harness social media effectively for professional purposes. Clinicians tried to use a variety of social media tools to share clinical knowledge; however, despite the availability of many medically focused virtual communities (professional communities), clinicians did not exploit these sites for clinical knowledge sharing. The participants disclosed that the limitation of social media is lack of quality and reliability. Moreover, lack of social media usage policy or guideline in Ethiopia is the reason that some clinicians do not use social media; thus, building a local professional community platform and developing social media usage policy/guideline is future work.