Social media use in patients and relatives

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Social media use in head and neck cancer patients and their relatives

  • IRAS ID

    190109

  • Contact name

    Tarisai Mandishona

  • Contact email

    tm6g12@soton.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Southampton

  • Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

    14827, Ethics and Research Governance Application submission

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 1 months, 21 days

  • Research summary

    Ever increasingly everyone around the world such as healthcare professionals, healthcare providers, charities, patient groups, patients and families have begun to use the internet and social media to discuss medical conditions, find a diagnoses to their symptoms and even provide anecdotes to their experiences with diseases. Social media allows healthcare organisations to market services that they offer, connect with patients, and provide other helpful insights into healthcare, as well as allowing people to connect and possibly providing an element to improving a patient’s care. In my project, I will be looking more closely at social media and how it affects patients and their families. The use of social media in health care is very interesting as it allows a lot of questions to be explored. The aim of the project is to see whether patients with head and neck cancers along with their relatives use social media to look at information regarding the disease. This will allow me to develop implementation tools that involve social media that could be used by healthcare professionals and healthcare providers to improve the care of the patient
    I will be questioning patients attending the head and neck clinic along with their relatives who are all above the age of 18. This study will last approximately 2 month where I will collect data from 120 participants.

  • REC name

    Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds East Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    15/YH/0544

  • Date of REC Opinion

    2 Dec 2015

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion