A quality assessment of respiratory auscultation material on youtube

Abstract

YouTube contains a large volume of medical educational material. This study assessed the quality of respiratory auscultation videos contained in YouTube. Videos were searched for using the terms 'breath sounds', 'respiratory sounds', 'respiratory auscultation' and/or 'lung sounds'. In total, 6,022 videos were located, 36 of which were considered suitable for scoring for video accuracy, comprehensiveness and quality. The average score was 3.32/6 (55.3%±1.30). Video score correlated with time-adjusted YouTube metadata: hits per day (0.496, p=0.002) and likes per day (0.534, p=0.001). Video score also correlated with the first search page on which the video was located in the 'breath sounds' and 'lung sounds' searches (-0.571, p=0.001; -0.445, p=0.014, respectively). The quality of videos was variable. Correlation between video score and some metadata values suggests that there is value for their use in judging video quality. However, the large number of videos found and inability to filter these results quickly makes locating educational content difficult. © Royal College of Physicians 2014. All rights reserved.