Dados do Trabalho

Título

Sleep medicine on Instagram: fashion dances and nonsense.

Resumo

Introduction. With the advancement of social networks we have a new profession: the “digital influencer”. No formal training or specializations are required, just communication skills and understanding of the target audience. In the context of the digital world, it is very common for health professionals to abandon their technical behavior based upon science knowledge, adopting a common language and a banal attitude, associating themselves with their target audience. The objective of this study was to analyze the Instagram profiles of sleep medicine professionals.
Method. We did an Instagram search using only the word “sleep”. We access the searched accounts and only analyzed professional profiles.
Results. We found 78 professional profiles. Of these, 12 otolaryngologists, 12 physiotherapists, 10 sleep consultants, 9 psychologists, 8 neurologists, 5 pulmonologists, 3 psychiatrists, 3 pediatricians, 2 dentists, 2 sleep educators, 1 sleep biologist/consultant, 1 biomedical doctor, 1 cardiologist, 1 scientist, 1 doula, 1 nurse, 1 coach, 1 speech therapist, 1 mentor/sleep therapist, 1 multiprofessional group, 1 psychoanalyst and 1 sleep specialist.
Fifty-eight profiles present a marketing pattern focused on their professional performance; 17 profiles focused on diseases; 13 advertise their courses and 3 profiles their mentorships, 1 profile a webinar and 1 profile a podcast. The most frequent publications addressed were: 42% sleep in general, 26% infant sleep, 13% apnea and CPAP, 8% insomnia and 5% snoring.
Regarding the content of the publications, 44 profiles (56%) have an informative/technical pattern, 19 (24%) have an informative/sensitizing pattern and 20 profiles (26%) have a sensitizing content.
Considering the quality of the posts, 68% have a homemade pattern and 33% have a professional pattern.
Discussion/Conclusion. Advertising in the area of sleep medicine involves a heterogeneous group of people and professionals. Most of them, without the proper formal training required by the area, in addition to offering treatments, offer courses always aiming at a good financial return. The way they present themselves is typical of current times when they are equal in expressions to young influencers, centered on their own opinions and not on traditional technical-scientific standards. In addition, they refer to themselves with a varied and unofficial titles and measure their value by the number of followers and interaction with the public.

Palavras Chave

sleep medicine; professional profile, Instagram.