[Use of social media by French urologists: Results from a study of the National French Urological Association].
OBJECTIVE
Social Media (SoMe) have changed the face of modern medicine. Our purpose was to make an inventory on the use of SoMe within urologists members of the French Urological Association (AFU).


METHODS
A 15 questions-survey was sent by email 2 months to urologists AFU members before the 108th French Congress of Urology (#CFU2014). At the same time, the activity of urologists using Twitter was analyzed over the period of the national conference with the symplur software (www.symplur.com).


RESULTS
Overall, 270 (17.3%) surveys were completed. Only 50% of responders had an online SoMe account. The most commonly used social media platforms were: Facebook (36.1%) followed by LinkedIn (28.2%), Google+ (19.6%), YouTube (18.7%) and Twitter (17.4%). The use of SoMe was higher in the age groups 30-40 and 40-50 years than in older age groups (83% versus 36%). Only 38.7% of respondents reported using SoMe in a professional field. At the congress #CFU2014, there were over 1000 tweets generated by 173 different contributors.


CONCLUSIONS
Only a minority of French urologists have reported to be connected to SoMe and a predominantly personal use. The emergence of Twitter in French urological conferences is very new but seems promising. Further studies are needed, especially within the members of the residents French urological association to better characterize the true impact of SoMe in urology.


METHODS
4.
Service d'urologie, clinique Pasteur, 40, avenue de Lombez, 31300 Toulouse, France. Electronic address: v.misrai@clinique-pasteur.com.
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Misrai
Service d'urologie, clinique de l'Espérance, 06250 Mougins, France.
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Castagnola
Service d'urologie de l'hôpital de Grenoble, Grenoble, France.
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JL
Descotes
Service d'urologie de l'hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, AP-HP, 75013 Paris, France; ONCOTYPE-URO, institut universitaire de cancérologie, GRC5, UPMC université Paris 06, 75005 Paris, France.
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Rouprêt
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D061108:Social Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012955:Societies, Medical; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014572:Urology
Bibliographie; Education; Enseignement; Internet; Journal club; Network; Réseau; Réseau social; Social media; Twitter; Urologie; Urology; Web 2.0