Assessing the impact of Physicians’ Virtual Communities on their medical Decision Making quality

Abstract

Medical decision making is daunting to physicians of its unclear benefits for improving patient care while such decisions are evidence based and also are from the social capital of resources of the advises shared between their peers. Past scholars have reported great deal of medical errors and misdiagnoses caused by physicians: a situation that is degrading healthcare quality. It is not surprising why past research also stressed on the importance to empirically explore the effect of physicians’ virtual community on their medical decision making quality. Virtual communities are a promising initiative in the healthcare sector. This paper describes how the participation of VC members is possible through the application of the Social Capital Theory’s three dimensions in order to assess the effectiveness of physicians’ virtual community so they can make better quality of medical decisions. Such is depicted in this paper’s conceptual model. The model was empirically tested for its validity and reliability using an adapted survey for which data was collected from 204 SurveyMonkey virtual community physician members. The empirical evidence supports the hypothesis of the conceptual model through physicians’ identification and shared vision, i.e. two pre-requisites for medical DM.