A Study of Factors Influencing the Volume of Responses to Posts in Physician Online Community

Abstract

Today’s diverse health needs place greater demands on physicians. However, individual doctors have limited capabilities and may encounter many unsolvable medical problems. The physician online community provides a platform for physicians to communicate with each other and help each other. Physicians can post for help about problems they encounter at work. The number of responses to physicians’ posts is critical to whether or not the problem is resolved. This study collected information on 13,226 posts from a well-known physician online community in China to analyze the factors that influence the number of post replies. In the analysis of the post content of the physician online community, this study innovatively introduces word usage features in the medical field. TextMind was used to extract the rate of several types of words in posts that frequently appear when describing medical information. Ultimately, we found that the rate of time words, visual words, auditory words, and physiological process words used in posts had a positive and significant effect on the number of post responses. A series of new post features has been found to have an impact on the number of post replies in physician online communities. This finding is beneficial for physicians to quickly obtain peer assistance through online platforms, increasing the likelihood of solving workplace challenges and improving physician care, as well as the success of physician online communities.