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Crowdsourcing and Comparing the General US Public's Perceptions of the Breadth and Depth of Plastic Surgery
Cody L. Mullens, MPH; Joshua T. Henderson, MD; Kerri M. Woodberry, MD
West Virginia University
2020-01-28
Presenter: Cody L. Mullens
Affidavit:
I certify that the material proposed for presentation in this abstract has not been published in any scientific journal or previously presented at a major meeting.
Director Name: Aaron C. Mason
Author Category: Medical Student
Presentation Category: Clinical
Abstract Category: General Reconstruction
The breadth and depth of Plastic Surgery (PS) have been assessed from the patient perspective, however no studies have robustly crowdsourced large generalized non-patient populations in order to determine what the true general public's perceptions are of PS practice. This study aims to clarify the general public's understanding of PS practice and compare it to perceptions of those in the healthcare workforce.
We harnessed a crowdsourcing platform, Amazon MTurk, to obtain perspectives of 1000 members of the US public and 100 healthcare workers on the practice of PS.
The procedures that respondents most commonly associated with PS were facelift (89.7%), breast augmentation (84.8%), and breast reduction (86.0%). Overall, respondents were 41% more likely to appropriately associate cosmetic procedures with PS than they were reconstructive procedures (p<0.0001). The procedures resulting in lowest association with PS were hernia repair (3.7%), hand tendon repair (5.0%), orthognathic surgery (12.3%), and carpal tunnel release (3.8%). In terms of recognizing PS subspecialties, respondents most often recognized cosmetic surgery (93.3%), whereas hand surgery and others were recognized only one-quarter of the time. The majority of the populous (72.7%) was unable to differentiate between surgeons who are versus aren't board certified in PS. Lastly, there were no significant differences in perceptions between the crowdsourced group and those working in healthcare.
There are misconceptions in the public and within the healthcare workforce regarding the scope of PS. Efforts should be made to educate the public and our healthcare colleagues of the true breadth and depth of our field.
