Comparing Clinician Engagement With Medical Education Content on a Clinician-Only Versus a Public Medical Education Website

Abstract

Purpose: The number of online resources for medical education is rapidly increasing, as are the potential platforms for disseminating these resources. OPENPediatrics is a web-based social learning program that utilizes both a clinician-only web-based platform and social media to publish medical education videos. The aim of this work was to compare clinician engagement with medical education videos on the OPENPediatrics website (www.OPENPediatrics.org) and its pubic social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter). Methods: Video analytic data was collected between August 2016 to January 2017 from the OPENPediatrics website and OPENPediatrics YouTube channel for 296 videos. A total of 2,210 lifetime video comments were compiled, coded, and thematically analyzed from the OPENPediatrics website and YouTube channel. User analytic data from the OPENPediatrics Facebook and Twitter accounts were collected for the same time period. Results: OPENPediatrics YouTube channel had ten times the number of video views overall. However, there was less overall viewer retention with and commenting on the videos on the OPENPediatrics YouTube channel compared to the OPENPediatrics website. Viewers watched videos twice as long on average on the OPENPediatrics website. There were more video comments made on the OPENPediatrics website than the YouTube channel (1,941 vs 269). Notably, the majority of video comments (70.7%) on the OPENPediatrics website were based in discussion. In contrast, the majority of the YouTube video comments (58.2%) were laudatory. Less than five percent of users that viewed daily OPENPediatrics Facebook or Twitter posts also engaged by commenting, liking, or sharing the content. Conclusions: Engagement with medical education content differed between the clinician-only OPENPediatrics website and OPENPediatrics social media platforms. This data suggests that public social media platforms may be better for attracting greater viewership of medical education videos, while clinician-only platforms may be better suited for fostering discussion and community.