Ruchika Talwar: Hello everyone. My name is Ruchika Talwar and I am delighted to welcome you back to the UroToday Center for Health Policy Excellence. Today I am joined by Dr Nikita Bhatt, a researcher at Newcastle Hospital in the United Kingdom. She has done various work exploring how urologists can use social media interventions and was recently first author on a very interesting article published in European Urology. Dr. Bhatt, thank you very much for joining us today.
Nikita Bhatt: Thank you, Dr. Talwar for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. So thank you, Dr. Talwar, for this introduction. As she mentioned, we recently published this article in European Urology. This is on behalf of our EAU Dissemination Committee and we are working with the EAU Patient Office on this study. I’ll look at it quite briefly. You can read it. This is a platinum opinion piece, so it’s only in print, so I hope you’ll come back and check it out later. But basically the reason we decided to do this is because we know that social media is used by many people around the world. The average adult spends about three hours, I’m guilty, on social media. And we found that social media interventions improve engagement by nearly 83% and can positively impact health behavior outcomes in almost 89% of users.
So, what exactly are social media interventions? So the definition is that these are interactive platforms that allow two-way communication between peers or between the platform and users. And the key to this dynamic lies in multidirectional interaction. And that can be communication within the group as well as between the group and the healthcare provider. Much work has already been done on this topic, and a Cochrane review was published which highlighted social media interventions in other specialties. This is a busy slide, but I just wanted to highlight the different areas where these interventions have already been used for things like health behavior change, smoking cessation, HIV testing among high-risk patients, nutrition in young adults.
And you can see the type of interventions that were used, like education, goal setting, social support, data sharing, peer support, et cetera. So, various social media platforms can also be used, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, not forgetting online chat rooms and gaming apps. These are some of the other types of things that social media interventions have been used for, such as cancer prevention, sexual health behaviors, general physical activity, and obesity to promote weight loss. weight.
Interestingly, we haven’t used it in urology yet and there are a number of applications that we thought could be used in our field. And things like stopping smoking, for example, can apply to urological diseases. A healthy lifestyle is obviously universally applicable. Promoting sexual health also applies to our patients. And then we can think of new areas where we can use this, like incontinence. So we can have sort of a multi-faceted program for our patients with pelvic floor muscle training, bladder training, you can have an app for chronic pelvic pain, you can have a sexual dysfunction interaction for patients with erectile dysfunction where you promote a healthy lifestyle, smoking cessation, et cetera.
And in urology, we’re very good at engaging patient advocacy groups. So we have the bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer advocacy groups. And the EAU has certainly done a lot with these patient groups to try to engage them. So the key is to try to engage patients, find out what’s important to them and find out what would work for them. And I hope you will start using them in urology.
Ruchika Talwar: Thank you very much, Dr. Bhatt for going through your article. I think a lot of the points you make are really fascinating. We have recently seen an increase in content such as podcasts or YouTube channels, especially here in the United States. Some urologists rely on these platforms to disseminate information to patients. But I agree with you. I think the world of Instagram, the two-way social media platforms like you mentioned, Instagram, Twitter or patients to interact directly with doctors. . Now, the one thing I wanted to get your thoughts on is this idea of misinformation or inaccurate information that’s floating around on the internet. I think the positive side of urologists adopting these types of platforms is that we’re able to combat some of that by being an accurate source. But what advice do you give to urologists who have patients who say, “I read this, I saw that,” and it’s really inaccurate information.
Nikita Bhatt: I mean this unfortunately goes hand in hand with social media. Much work has been published, for example by Stacy Loeb and many urologists across the Atlantic as well as in the UK, and the EAU Guidelines are currently proposing a new chapter which will guide urologists on how to use social media. I guess when patients ask us questions and there’s a lot of misinformation, obviously our job is to inform them, but if we have something better to offer them or suggest, that means you can offer them an alternative option, because they I’m going to go there, look for information. That’s what we all do. It’s completely natural. So doing this ourselves and having this type of quality control ourselves would make a huge difference. So I think we should address this and make sure that we have credible sources and that we follow the kind of guidelines on how to be professional on social media and give patients the right information.
Ruchika Talwar: Yes exactly. And what is your suggestion when a urologist posts, for example, thread ‘information ? Should they put citations? Should they cite specific studies just to tell our patients that the advice we give you is evidence-based?
Nikita Bhatt: Yeah. I think it’s important to have some sort of credibility in what you post. The problem with obviously X and even Instagram is that you have a limited word count. So our circulation committee always tries to do visual summaries and images, and it’s quite simple, isn’t it, that if you have an image or a visual summary suggesting what you want to say at the bottom, you only have one reference. This means you can get more information in a concise way. So that would be my suggestion. But yeah, I think if you put out a lot of information about patients, then they want to know where it came from. And some patients are actually interested in reading studies and there are lay summaries now, like European Urology has a patient summary for all of their articles, so they might actually be interested in reading it themselves. So they should have this option.
Ruchika Talwar: Yeah. Yeah, it’s great. And then, a lot of scientific work is also carried out, which does not necessarily reach patients immediately. There is a long delay before an article is published, before this information is actually integrated into practice and finally reaches patients. So I definitely see social media as a way for patients to stay up to date with some of the newest information available. Obviously, sites like this, UroToday, feature groundbreaking research, but what are your thoughts on the ability of social media to provide an interface between research and our patients?
Nikita Bhatt: I think the answer to that question really lies with patient advocacy groups and PPIs, patient public participation panels. So in most of the research we do now, we always use a panel of PPIs, who are then our primary point of contact to understand how best to disseminate this information to patients. But as you said, sites like yours and many newsletters do a great job trying to promote research to patients, and the EAU guidelines have patient members of the public in their guideline panels. So they obviously bring the patient perspective and then help disseminate the guidelines among the relevant groups in the bladder cancer groups and the prostate cancer groups. And there are so many charities doing the same work. For example, in the UK there is the Urology Foundation and much of its work involves disseminating information and new research to patients. So I think we can all together continue to work in this direction by getting the right evidence out to patients in a timely manner.
Ruchika Talwar: Before concluding, many urologists are hesitant or nervous about putting themselves out there on social media. What advice do you give them?
Nikita Bhatt: So I mean, I’m not going to lie, it’s not an easy world out there. It can be quite dangerous if you put something out and it upsets people and you have to figure out what’s the best way to post or what’s the right way or tone of post, et cetera. But my suggestion is to read the chapter on the upcoming WATER guidelines. It was written by this committee, and many urology social media experts contributed. So I hope you can understand what is the best way to interact with social media without being afraid. And again, there are a lot of articles that will hopefully be referenced in this chapter that you can read that are excellent, absolutely excellent in giving you advice on how to best use social media as a professional.
Ruchika Talwar: Very good advice. I think many people will appreciate the guidelines that will be released. Thank you very much, Dr. Bhatt, for spending time with us today. I think we’ve covered a really important, very practical and timely topic, and thank you to our audience for participating once again here at UroToday.
Nikita Bhatt: Thank you very much for inviting me.
