General practitioners' wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Novel methods with social media data

Abstract

Background

It is difficult to engage busy healthcare professionals in research. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, gaining their perspectives has never been more important.

Objective

To explore social media data for insights into the wellbeing of UK General Practitioners (GPs) during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methods

We used a combination of search approaches to identify 381 practising UK NHS GPs on Twitter. Using a two stage social media analysis, we firstly searched for key themes from 91,034 retrieved tweets (before and during the pandemic). Following this we used qualitative content analysis to provide in-depth insights from 7145 tweets related to wellbeing.

Results

Social media proved a useful tool to identify a cohort of UK GPs; following their tweets longitudinally to explore key themes and trends in issues related to GP wellbeing during the pandemic. These predominately related to support, resources and public perceptions and fluctuations were identified at key timepoints during the pandemic, all achieved without burdening busy GPs.

Conclusion

Social media data can be searched to identify a cohort of GPs to explore their wellbeing and changes over time.