Even as misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic continues to proliferate on social media, physicians on the front lines are turning to Facebook, Twitter and more for the most up-to-date information about COVID-19.
Helen Ouyang, MD, an emergency physician at New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian, described in a March 18 article for The New York Times how she and her colleagues have come to rely on their social media feeds and groups for the latest information about the pandemic.
"For the past few weeks, after I get home from my shifts in the emergency room, I scroll through Facebook pages on my laptop, getting firsthand stories from doctors in Italy, China and Iran," Dr. Ouyang wrote. "I scan through their patients' ultrasound and CT scans, review their blood tests, read day-by-day accounts of their clinical progress and listen to retrospective thoughts of what worked well — and what didn't."
Her next stop is Twitter: "I pause at a small study here, a letter in an academic journal there. Any clinical information I can find, even an anecdote about a single patient, feels very useful," she wrote.
Dr. Ouyang is also a member of several Facebook groups in which physicians have been sharing hundreds of posts outlining their experiences and both offering and asking for advice.
"This is a new virus, and best clinical practices about how to treat the growing caseload of infections is scarce and evolving," she wrote, noting that social media offers a platform for physicians to crowdsource solutions in real-time, as well as offer one another emotional support through these difficult times.
"We may still be trying to determine the specific clinical prescription to follow to most effectively care for patients critically infected with the new coronavirus," Dr. Ouyang concluded. "But we will continue to treat the sick as we have always done, even in the face of great uncertainty."