Abstract
Introduction
Social media has become an integral part of our daily life with 38 million users in the UK alone and the average user being logged-in for 135 minutes daily. Social media is increasingly used to disseminate learning in a variety of fields including medicine.
Objectives
The aim of this study was to assess the proportion of Instagram posts using #ultrasound for educational content and compare this with #radiology. We also aimed to assess the changes in the use of the newly introduced #UltrasoundEd for ultrasound education since its introduction in November 2018.
Methods
Instagram searches were conducted using the hashtags: #ultrasound and #radiology, and the content of the first 100 posts from each search was analysed and classified into being either social or educational. A second search using #UltrasoundEd was conducted at baseline, 3 months and 12 months. Fisher’s exact test was used to compare categorical data.
Results
The searches retrieved 461,884 #ultrasound and 243,011 #radiology posts. From the first 100 #ultrasound posts, 11 were educational and 89 were social. The social posts predominantly related to announcements of pregnancy. Of the 100 #radiology posts, 49 were educational, while 51 were classified as social. The number of posts with the hashtag #UltrasoundEd increased over the study period from 15 to 232, with the majority of posts being educational.
Conclusions
Educational ultrasound content is difficult to separate from social posts on Instagram. The use of the hashtag #UltrasoundEd makes educational ultrasound content more readily identifiable.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.