How Social Media Facilitate Health Knowledge Sharing among Physicians

Recent studies have increasingly emphasised the importance of using social media for knowledge sharing in healthcare. However, few studies have explored physicians' perspectives. The present study aimed to explore the potential roles of social media for facilitating knowledge sharing from Iranian physicians' perspectives. In the present qualitative study, semi-structure interview was administered to 21 physicians by adopting a purposive snowball sampling method. The data analysis was done using the thematic analysis method by MAXQDA 10. The analysis of interviews resulted in the extraction of 164 codes into three themes and eight sub-themes. Accordingly, the main benefits of social media for sharing health knowledge were as follows: supporting information encountering, stimulate knowledge sharing and facilitating tacit knowledge sharing. Although physicians have different attitudes toward using social media, similar to other health professionals, facilitating the role of social media to facilitate knowledge sharing can be beneficial to physicians The study aims to provide an opportunity for physicians and healthcare management to better understand the impact of social media in health knowledge sharing.