title: Leveraging Social Media to Promote Evidence-Based Continuing Medical Education.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  New dissemination methods are needed to engage physicians in evidence-based continuing medical education (CME).
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To examine the effectiveness of social media in engaging physicians in non-industry-sponsored CME.
  
  
  METHODS
  We tested the effect of different media platforms (e-mail, Facebook, paid Facebook and Twitter), CME topics, and different "hooks" (e.g., Q&A, clinical pearl and best evidence) on driving clicks to a landing site featuring non-industry sponsored CME. We modelled the effects of social media platform, CME topic, and hook using negative binomial regression on clicks to a single landing site. We used clicks to landing site adjusted for exposure and message number to calculate rate ratios. To understand how physicians interact with CME content on social media, we also conducted interviews with 10 physicians.
  
  
  METHODS
  The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) membership.
  
  
  METHODS
  NPA e-mail recipients, Facebook followers and friends, and Twitter followers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Clicks to the NPA's CME landing site.
  
  
  RESULTS
  On average, 4,544 recipients received each message. Messages generated a total of 592 clicks to the landing site, for a rate of 5.4 clicks per 1000 recipients exposed. There were 5.4 clicks from e-mail, 11.9 clicks from Facebook, 5.5 clicks from paid Facebook, and 6.9 clicks from Twitter to the landing site for 1000 physicians exposed to each of 4 selected CME modules. A Facebook post generated 2.3x as many clicks to the landing site as did an e-mail after controlling for participant exposure, hook type and CME topic (p<0.001). Twitter posts (p = 0.13) and paid Facebook posts (p = 0.06) were not statistically different from e-mail in generating clicks to the landing site. Use of different hooks to engage physicians had no impact on clicks to the landing site. Interviews with physicians suggested that social media might not be a preferred vehicle for disseminating CME.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Social media has a modest impact on driving traffic to evidence-based CME options. Facebook had a superior effect on driving physician web traffic to evidence-based CME compared to other social media platforms and email.
authors.affiliation: National Physicians Alliance, Washington, DC, United States of America.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Flynn
authors.affiliation: University of Washington School of Public Health, Department of Health Services, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hebert
authors.affiliation: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Korenstein
authors.affiliation: Virginia Commonwealth University, Department of Family Medicine and Population Health, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ryan
authors.affiliation: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Family and Social Medicine, Bronx, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: William B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Jordan
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, Division of Internal Medicine and the San Francisco Virginia, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Salomeh
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9124-9618
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Keyhani
mesh_terms: D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians; D061108:Social Media; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires