Evaluation of the approach of General Surgery Specialists in Turkey to surgical videos published on YouTube

Objective: YouTube is an extremely popular social media platform used to watch, upload and share videos. YouTube contains many surgical videos intended for educational or marketing purposes. This article primarily aims to reveal Turkish general surgeons’ approach to and interest in social media, with a special focus on YouTube, and to discuss the pros and cons of YouTube as an educational source. Methods: An online survey of general surgery residents and attending physicians was conducted between April 2021 and May 2021 using a 16-item questionnaire. Participants were first asked to provide consent and provide demographic data such as age, sex and medical title, and then to answer questions about the use of social media, particularly YouTube, viewing surgical videos on YouTube, the ethical aspect of posting surgical videos on social media and whether or not they use it for educational purposes. Statistical analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics, ratios and frequencies. Results: The survey was completed by 46 general surgeons with various medical titles from different healthcare institutions. Most participants reported using YouTube to watch videos (95.7%). Almost a quarter (28.3%) reported frequently using YouTube to view surgery videos. Furthermore, most participants (87%) found the surgery videos on YouTube educational (91.3%). One of the striking results was that 52.2% of the participants reported that they had a friend who performed a first-time surgical procedure after watching it on YouTube. In addition, most surgeons considered it ethically appropriate to use surgical videos from YouTube as an educational source (76.10%). Conclusion: YouTube draws great interest from general surgeons as well as other members of society. General surgeons watch surgical videos on YouTube for educational purposes and find it ethical to post such videos. However, more extensive studies are needed to clarify further the role of increasingly used video-sharing platforms in education.