Current Uses (and Potential Misuses) of Facebook: An Online Survey in Physiotherapy
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Purpose: In recent years, the use of social media such as Facebook has become extremely popular and widespread in our society. Among users are health care professionals, who must develop ways to extend their professionalism online. Before issuing formal guidelines, policies, or recommendations to guide online behaviours, there is a need to know to what extent Facebook influences the professional life of physiotherapy professionals. Our goal was to explore knowledge and behaviour that physiotherapists and physical rehabilitation therapists practicing in Quebec have of Facebook. Method: We used an empirical cross-sectional online survey design (n=322, response rate 4.5%). Results: The results showed that 84.3% of physiotherapy professionals had a Facebook account. Almost all had colleagues or former colleagues as Facebook friends, 21% had patients as friends, and 27% had employers as friends. More than a third of workplaces had clinic pages with information intended for the public. Regarding workplace Facebook policies, 37.3% said that there was no policy and another 41.6% were not aware whether there was one or not. Conclusion: There appears to be a need to establish guidelines regarding the use of social media for physiotherapy professionals to ensure maintenance of professionalism and ethical conduct.
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Lower rates of social media use were seen in practicing health care professionals, physicians of different specialties, and program directors or faculty, mostly ranging from 50% to 80%.
“Lower rates of use were seen in practicing HCPs, physicians of different specialties, and program directors (PDs) or faculty, mostly ranging from 50% to 80% [35,39,74,80,83,85,86,88,89,91,96,105,106,108,110,113,114].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [85]
The Results (Personal Facebook use; page unavailable) report Facebook use among practising physiotherapy professionals, supporting that part of the cited sentence. The rate was 84.3% (258/306), however, and this paper does not establish that use was lower than in the comparison group implied by the sentence. The sentence’s “mostly” qualifier may allow this study to be an exception to the 50%–80% range. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredA linear relationship between increasing age and decreasing social media use was found among physicians of the same specialty or other health care professionals.
“A linear relationship between increasing age and decreasing SM use was also found among physicians of the same specialty or other HCPs [85,91,94,95,100,106].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [85]
The Results (page unavailable) show that Quebec physiotherapy professionals with Facebook accounts were younger than those without accounts, and the Discussion reports a similar age pattern among medical residents and fellows. The paper does not establish a linear relationship across ages: its own analysis compares two age groups, and it measures Facebook use rather than social media use generally. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEven if institutions have social media policies or guidelines, health care professionals acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing social media policies or ignorance of their existence.
“Contrary to that finding, even if institutions have SM policies or guidelines, HCPs acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing SM policies [78,85,114] or ignorance to their existence [61,64,65,100].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [85]
41.6% of physiotherapists were not aware whether there was an institutional social media policy or not.
“A lack of awareness of existing institutional SM policies was also observed for physiotherapists; 41.6% were not aware whether there was one or not [85], and half of the medical students and faculty were unaware of existing institutional SM guidelines [114].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [85]
Even if institutions have social media policies or guidelines, health care professionals acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing social media policies or ignorance to their existence.
“Our results show that even though a lack of SM policies was recognized as a barrier, even if institutions have SM policies or guidelines, HCPs acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing SM policies [78,85,114] or ignorance to their existence [61,64,65,100].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [85]
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References 38 · Cited by 20
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- Authors
- Laliberté, M., Beaulieu-Poulin, C., Campeau Larrivée, A., Charbonneau, M., Samson, É., & Ehrmann Feldman, D.
- Affiliations
- Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation (CA)
- Université de Montréal (CA)
- École de réadaptation
- Corresponding author
- Laliberté, Maude
- ORCID
- Laliberté, Maude
- Venue
- Physiotherapy Canada
- Published
- 2016-02
- Volume
- 68
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-12
- ISSN
- 0300-0508 (ISSN-L)
- 1708-8313
- PMC
- PMC4961309
- OpenAlex
- W2261297252
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 5 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 1.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Physiotherapy Canada (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Social Sciences › Demography › Cyberloafing and Workplace Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Keywords
- Facebook, social media use, physiotherapists, professional ethics, professionalism, online professional conduct, Quebec
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