Today, healthcare services in gynaecology and obstetrics aim for women to be independent in care and to provide self-management. At this point, the nurse's role as an educator in gynaecology and obstetrics has gained importance, and the patient education process should be carried out in line with the needs and characteristics of women. Therefore, using new technologies in the planning and implementation of patient education will increase the quality of education by providing practical education in a systematic, fast, and easy way. The use of Spotify, one of the new technologies, in patient education in gynaecology and obstetrics will enable women to access education easily at any time, place, and even position. Preferring Spotify in patient education in gynaecology and obstetrics will enable women to gain independence and healthy behaviour by respecting themselves. The preference for Spotify as an innovative approach to patient education in gynaecology and obstetrics is of great importance in digital health applications. This commentary draws attention to the use of digital learning platforms (Spotify, podcasts, YouTube) in obstetrics and gynaecology.
The algorithmic recommendations used by digital platforms have significant impacts on users behaviours and preferences. For instance, Spotify and Tinder ground their platforms on recommendation algorithms that nudge users to either listen to specific songs or romantically match with specific users. Despite their powerful influence, there is little concrete detail about how exactly these algorithms work as technology companies are increasingly resistant to scholarly scrutiny. This article makes both methodological and substantive contributions to understanding how these influential recommendation algorithms work. We conducted a sequential analysis of historical and contemporary iterations of Spotify and Tinder's Privacy Policies and Terms of Use to ascertain the extent to which it is possible to use this sort of analysis to infer functionalities of the algorithmic recommendations. Our results offered certain insights into the companies, such as Spotify acknowledging in its Privacy Policy that companie's commercial agreements may be altering the recommendations. However, the legal documentation of both companies is ambiguous and lacks detail as to the platform's use of AI and user data. This opaque drafting of Privacy Policies and Terms of Use hamper the capacity of outsiders to properly scrutinise the companies' algorithms and their relationship with users.
This work shows that positive old music listening surged during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, suggesting a rise in preference for nostalgia and positivity in music. Using the music streaming data of Spotify users in the UK and employing multivariate regression analysis, this work documents that users were more likely to listen to songs older than 5 years during the national lockdown that began in late March 2020 compared with the pre-lockdown period. Such a change in preference was not observed in the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, more frequent listening to old music is found in samples of positive songs and also negative songs. This suggests that the preference for nostalgic music is to a certain extent independent of the positivity bias during the pandemic found in the literature. Yet, this work also provides evidence that the nostalgia-seeking behaviour and the preference for positive songs reinforced each other during the lockdown as the surge in positive old music was more persistent than that in positive recent music.
Previous literature has shown that music preferences (and thus preferred musical features) differ depending on the listening context and reasons for listening (RL). Yet, to our knowledge no research has investigated how features of music that people dance or move to relate to particular RL. Consequently, in two online surveys, participants (N = 173) were asked to name songs they move to ("dance music"). Additionally, participants (N = 105) from Survey 1 provided RL for their selected songs. To investigate relationships between the two, we first extracted audio features from dance music using the Spotify API and compared those features with a baseline dataset that is considered to represent music in general. Analyses revealed that, compared to the baseline, the dance music dataset had significantly higher levels of energy, danceability, valence, and loudness, and lower speechiness, instrumentalness and acousticness. Second, to identify potential subgroups of dance music, a cluster analysis was performed on its Spotify audio features. Results of this cluster analysis suggested five subgroups of dance music with varying combinations of Spotify audio features: "fast-lyrical", "sad-instrumental", "soft-acoustic", "sad-energy", and "happy-energy". Third, a factor analysis revealed three main RL categories: "achieving self-awareness", "regulation of arousal and mood", and "expression of social relatedness". Finally, we identified variations in people's RL ratings for each subgroup of dance music. This suggests that certain characteristics of dance music are more suitable for listeners' particular RL, which shape their music preferences. Importantly, the highest-rated RL items for dance music belonged to the "regulation of mood and arousal" category. This might be interpreted as the main function of dance music. We hope that future research will elaborate on connections between musical qualities of dance music and particular music listening functions.
Social media is an increasingly relevant tool for health education, enabling information exchange, promoting autonomy and supporting informed decision-making. This study introduces Menopausando, a predominantly Portuguese-language digital platform designed to support women during menopausal transition and postmenopause. This cross-sectional study has been carried out in the Gynecology Discipline, São Paulo University, Brazil, since 2019. In the pre-implementation phase of the digital platform, interviews were conducted with 287 Internet users about their experiences and preferences to be disclosed on the digital platform. The chi-square test or Fisher's exact test and analysis of variance with Stata 16 SE were utilized. Interviewees were 83.3% white with mean age 54.3 (1.82) years, and 78.8% were interested in a menopause digital platform. The platform reached 21,617 website users, 3048 Instagram users, 133 Facebook users and 1126 Spotify users. Facebook users were older, men age 51.3 (9.3) years, than Spotify users, mean age 45.6 (12.2) years (p < 0.001). Female gender was present in all social networks (p < 0.001). The largest number of Brazilian users was on the website, with 21,000 (97.1%) (p < 0.001) (all groups), and other countries' websites and Instagram (p < 0.001). Menopausando effectively supports women during menopausal transition and postmenopause via multiple digital channels. The results expose digital access tendencies and inequalities.
Meditation has grown in popularity in recent years, but many people who try meditation often fail to establish a habit. Goal setting has been demonstrated to be an effective technique in behavior change in other health-related contexts but is understudied in the meditation context. This study had 2 objectives: (1) to assess the association between goal setting and the number of days people meditated and (2) to evaluate whether anchoring bias in the goal-setting question (via response option order) influences goal selection and subsequent meditation behavior. This large-scale quasi-experimental field study included 18,559 Spotify mobile users aged 18 years or older residing in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States who had listened to at least 5 minutes of meditation content from a specified teacher. The in-app experiment consisted of 2 goal-setting test conditions and an active control. In the test conditions, participants selected the number of days they intended to listen to content from the meditation teacher in the next 7 days. The conditions differed only in the order of goal response options (higher goals listed first vs last). The active control rated how much they liked the teacher but did not set a goal. Because responding was optional, selection bias is possible, and the design is quasi-experimental. The act of setting any goal had a modest positive association with the number of days people meditated in both treatment condition 1 (β=.08, 95% CI 0.01-0.16) and treatment condition 2 (β=.08, 95% CI 0.002-0.15). People who committed to higher goals were also more likely to meditate more than those who committed to lower goals. Additionally, the distribution of goals between the treatment conditions varied (χ22=84.24; P<.001), and the differences in these distributions subsequently yielded differences in the number of days each group meditated, on average (t2744.1=-2.34; P=.02; Cohen d=-0.09). Ultimately, placing the highest goal as the first answer choice yielded higher average active days among those who chose a goal, but many more people opted out of answering the question itself. Simply offering an optional in-app goal-setting prompt, the intention-to-treat estimate from the experiment, did not change meditation engagement at the population level. However, among users who chose to respond and set a goal, goal selection was associated with a modest increase in active days. Response option order (anchoring) shifted both goal selection and opt-out rates. These findings highlight an uptake-engagement trade-off that is relevant for digital behavior change design.
Digital platforms have expanded access to continuing medical education (CME), with podcasts and social media increasingly used as asynchronous learning resources. However, most established digital medical education initiatives operate primarily in English, creating linguistic and contextual barriers for professionals in non-Anglophone settings. Infectious diseases (ID) require frequent updating, and access to structured ID-focused CME in middle-income countries such as Brazil remains uneven. InfectoCast is a Brazilian digital initiative that integrates podcasting, social media, and written resources to support infectious diseases education and science communication in Portuguese. We conducted a descriptive, retrospective quantitative analysis of platform-level analytics from the InfectoCast digital ecosystem between 18 September 2020 and 18 October 2025. Podcast metrics, including total plays, listening time, and geographic distribution, were extracted from Spotify for Podcasters. Social media metrics were obtained from native analytics dashboards, primarily from Instagram, with supplementary data from other platforms. Analyses focused on audience reach, growth trends, and the structure of the multi-platform dissemination strategy. During the study period, the InfectoCast podcast released 168 episodes, accumulating 481 000 total plays and 53 962 hours of listening across 97 countries, with 96.9% of plays originating in Brazil. The Instagram account reached 110 000 followers and functioned as the primary platform for visual educational content, including infographics, educational carousels, short-form videos, and interactive Stories. When combined with YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, the blog, and the newsletter, the ecosystem achieved an estimated monthly reach of approximately 3 million users. The integration of audio, visual, and written formats enabled coordinated dissemination of infectious diseases educational content across platforms. This descriptive case report documents the structure, reach, and growth of InfectoCast, a Portuguese-language digital ecosystem dedicated to infectious diseases education and science communication. The findings illustrate the feasibility of integrating podcasting with social media and other digital formats to deliver educational content in a non-Anglophone context. This ecosystem-based approach may inform the development of similar initiatives in other medical specialties and regions where access to locally contextualized digital education is limited.
To develop and validate the content of an educational podcast on intestinal stoma care and ostomy bags. Need to develop a validated educational resource aimed at people with intestinal stomas in order to provide reliable and safe information on the necessary care. A methodological study. A methodological study conducted from May 2022 to March 2023, following four stages: analysis of podcast productions through a scoping review with technological prospecting to support content development; podcast creation based on the review findings; content validation by expert judges using the Delphi technique; and recording and publishing the podcast on streaming platforms. Data analysis was performed using a content validation instrument via Google Forms, considering the Content Validity Index. Data were compiled in spreadsheets using Microsoft Office Excel 2016, with results presented in tables and charts. A script was developed for the episode 'Care for hygiene, emptying, and changing intestinal ostomy bags', achieving an overall Content Validity Index of 0.97. After validation and content adjustments, the podcast, titled EstomaCast, was recorded and made freely available on Spotify and Deezer. The study enabled the development and validation of an educational podcast for self-care in intestinal stomas. The resource facilitates access to reliable information, supports health education, and improves communication between patients and professionals, promoting adherence to best practices in stoma care. Six judges evaluated the content.
The integration of digital media into health professions education has reshaped how knowledge is disseminated, accessed, and applied in both clinical and academic settings. This review explored the published literature relating to podcasting in the Medical Radiation Sciences (MRS) and synthesized the scope of publicly available MRS-related podcasts. A two-part methodology was used. Firstly, Apple Podcasts and Spotify were searched using relevant terms, and data were extracted on topic content, structure, target audience, and format. Secondly, a review of published journal articles was conducted using major literature databases. Of the 280 podcasts screened, 25 met the inclusion criteria. These included podcasts dedicated to medical imaging (n = 9), radiation therapy (n = 8), both disciplines (n = 4), nuclear medicine (n = 2), and all three (n = 2). They originated from the USA (n = 13), UK (n = 6), Australia (n = 4), Canada (n = 1), and Ireland (n = 1), with episode counts ranging from 2 to 427. Four journal articles were identified, reporting on podcasting as a strategy to enhance student engagement, support well-being, and explore challenging clinical topics. Informal formats, co-design with students, and integration into curricula were common. While anecdotal feedback and engagement data were positive, few studies used formal outcome measures. Podcasting shows promise as a flexible, learner-centred tool in MRS education.
Do birds of a feather really sing together? Musicians face two competing pressures in the pursuit of success: conforming to genre norms to meet audience expectations and distinguishing themselves to attract the attention of listeners. These opposing logics may shape how artists choose their collaborators. Partnering with similar artists can reinforce genre alignment, while working with dissimilar collaborators may help artists stand out. This paper explores how these dynamics play out through the lens of homophily in musical collaboration. Drawing on network analysis, we develop a framework for measuring cultural proximity using song-level and collaboration data sourced from Spotify's API. Focusing on the understudied genre of Grime, we investigate whether the pull of similarity-the tendency to form homophilous ties-overrides competitive pressures within the genre.
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged medical educators due to social distancing. Podcasts and asynchronous learning platforms help distill medical education in a socially distanced environment. Medical educators interested in providing asynchronous teaching should know how these methods performed during the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to assess the level of engagement for an emergency medicine (EM) board review podcast and website platform, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measured engagement via website traffic, including such metrics as visits, bounce rate, unique visitors, and page views. We also evaluated podcast analytics, which included total listeners, engaged listeners, and number of plays. Content was designed after the American Board of EM Model, covering only 1 review question per episode. Website traffic and podcast analytics were studied monthly from 2 time periods of 20 months each, before the pandemic (July 11, 2018, to February 31, 2020) and during the pandemic (May 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021). March and April 2020 data were omitted from the analysis due to variations in closure at various domestic and international locations. Results underwent statistical analysis in March 2022. A total of 132 podcast episodes and 93 handouts were released from July 11, 2018, to December 31, 2021. The mean number of listeners per podcast increased significantly from 2.11 (SD 1.19) to 3.77 (SD 0.76; t test, P<.001), the mean number engaged per podcast increased from 1.72 (SD 1.00) to 3.09 (SD 0.62; t test, P<.001), and the mean number of plays per podcast increased from 42.54 (SD 40.66) to 69.23 (SD 17.54; t test, P=.012). Similarly, the mean number of visits per posting increased from 5.85 (SD 3.28) to 15.39 (SD 3.06; t test, P<.001), the mean number of unique visitors per posting increased from 3.74 (SD 1.83) to 10.41 (SD 2.33; t test, P<.001), and the mean number of page views per posting increased from 17.13 (SD 10.63) to 33.32 (SD 7.01; t test, P<.001). Note that, all measures showed a decrease from November 2021 to December 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased engagement for our EM board review podcast and website platform over a long-term period, specifically through website visitors and the number of podcast plays. Medical educators should be aware of the increasing usage of web-based education tools, and that asynchronous learning is favorably viewed by learners. Limitations include the inability to view Spotify (Spotify Technology S.A.) analytics during the study period, and confounding factors like increased popularity of social media inadvertently promoting the podcast.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to characterize nurses' attitudes toward music and implementation of music into patient care and to characterize barriers and facilitators toward the implementation of music into patient care. Design: A cross-sectional, quantitative, web-based questionnaire with minor qualitative elements. Methods: The questionnaire contained both open- and closed-ended questions. It was developed in Qualtrics and sent via email to nurses working on inpatient units at an academic medical center hospital in the southeastern United States. Findings: A total of 348 nurses responded to the questionnaire. Eighty-nine percent of nurses reported having used music in their care. The methods of implementation most employed by nurses were streaming (90%) or encouraging a patient to play music on the patient's personal device (76.8%). Eighty-eight percent of nurses reported that access to music streaming services (e.g., Spotify) would be very helpful or extremely helpful. In response to the open-ended questions, nurses indicated a lack of equipment as the primary barrier to implementing music in care. Conclusion: Nurses reported having a positive attitude toward the use of music, strongly endorsing its utility in patient care. Although most nurses reported implementing music, many nurses reported barriers and facilitators to the implementation of music in patient care.
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Social media influencers have revolutionized information, gaining viewers, retention, and interest with short videos. Medical teams could potentially benefit from this medium for educating patients. Defining success in this endeavor remains unclear. We are a surgeon-nurse team that sought to promote our messages on social media to gain viewers and interest in our website. An educational podcast focusing on end-of-life discussions was linked to social media platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, to gain views on our website. Eleven podcast episodes were produced and published over a 3-month period, between November 2023 and January 2024. The podcast episodes were promoted to "similar clients" based on internal algorithms by a podcast streaming service, Spotify. The promotion provided by Spotify and website views were compared to responses evident by other social media posts. After 3 months of publishing podcast episodes on Spotify, with free publicity, our podcast gained 10,400 promotions, 486 listeners, 49 followers, and approximately 1200 random website views. In comparison, the podcast content garnered more than 50,000 video clip views on TikTok and Instagram, after funding these brief video promotions. TikTok and Instagram both charged $20 or more per promotion. Paid promotion opportunities resulted in no website visits or podcast followers. Our own experience with social media promotion was inadequate in generating interest in our content. The authors would encourage other teams to be strategic with paid promotions and to consider engaging a marketing expert to improve the potential for mass interest in content and promotional efficiency. Additionally, based on these findings, the authors would appreciate more transparency in the algorithms behind successful promotions to better understand "what success looks like" for medical messaging.
Hearing music can evoke vivid memories from one's past. Here, we examined how musical versus verbal features of pop songs influenced retrieval of autobiographical memories (AMs) and explored mechanisms of action. We first compared the quantity and quality of AMs evoked by musical cues (popular songs) versus matched nonmusical cues (spoken lyrics). On each trial, participants (N = 84) listened to an auditory cue, which was either musical (a song clip) or spoken (a computer-generated neutral voice reading the lyrics from the song clip). While listening, participants indicated via button press whether the cue evoked an AM - if so, they described the AM in text, then rated the AM's properties (e.g., age of the memory, feelings of reliving, cue familiarity). We found that song cues were significantly more likely to evoke AMs (M = 49%) than spoken cues (M = 33%), even when controlling for cue familiarity. Song cues also elicited significantly greater feelings of reliving the evoked AM, compared to spoken cues, though this effect disappeared after controlling for cue familiarity. Critically, we found evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between cues and their evoked AMs: older cues (e.g., songs released in 2017 vs. 2020) evoked older AMs, and more positive cues (e.g., songs of higher valence, as derived from Spotify audio features) evoked AMs with more positive content (as derived from sentiment analysis). Findings suggest that song cues enhance AM accessibility by setting the temporal and emotional contexts for retrieval.
Background: Nonpharmacological methods to manage symptoms of cancer and its treatment sequelae, including receptive music-based interventions (rMBIs), have gained traction due to their limited adverse effects and beneficial impact. Despite these benefits, implementation and analysis of personalized rMBIs in the infusion setting remain limited. Objectives: This study provided patients with a personalized rMBI during their infusion session and assessed changes in symptom burden and vitals to evaluate intervention efficacy. Design: The rMBI involved listening to a personalized playlist on Spotify on an iPad for 30 minutes and was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Outcomes include vitals and symptom burden (measured with the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale, ESAS) pre- and post-rMBI; changes were analyzed with paired t-tests. Post-rMBI, patient reflections were collected and analyzed with a rapid qualitative analysis approach. Settings/Subjects: This is a self-controlled case series among adult patients receiving infusion therapy at a single academic community hospital in the United States. Measurements/Results: A total of 50 participants were recruited. From the ESAS, rMBI led to significant decreases in pain (p = 0.011), tiredness (p < 0.0001), nausea (p = 0.014), anxiety (p = 0.005), and shortness of breath (p = 0.002), as well as a significant increase in feelings of well-being (p < 0.0001). Heart rate (p < 0.0001) and systolic blood pressure (p = 0.0234) also decreased post-rMBI. Patient narratives demonstrated common themes of escape, reflection/nostalgia, comfort/peace, hope, and rejuvenation. Conclusions: Personalized rMBIs are effective in managing symptoms and enhancing overall well-being in patients receiving infusions. These results support incorporating rMBIs as part of the patient experience and standard of care at infusion centers (NCT06450626).
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What makes cultural products such as edutainment (i.e., online talks) successful versus not? Asked differently, which characteristics make certain addresses more (vs. less) appealing? Across 12 field and lab studies, we explore when, why, and for whom the information load carried in TED talks causes them to gain (vs. lose) popularity. First and foremost, we uncover a negative effect whereby increases in the number of topics broached in a talk (i.e., information load) hurt viewer adoption. The cause? Processing disfluency. As information load soars, content becomes more difficult to process, which in turn reduces interest. Probing process further, we show this effect fades among audience members with greater need for cognition, a personality trait marking a penchant for deep and broad information processing. Similarly, the effect fades among edutainment viewers favoring education goals (i.e., cognitive enrichment) whereas it amplifies among those favoring entertainment (i.e., hedonic pleasure). Our investigation also documents the counterintuitiveness of our findings (i.e., how individuals mispredict which talks they would actually [dis]like). From these results, we derive theoretical insights for processing fluency research and the psychology of cultural products adoption (i.e., we weigh in on when, why, and for whom fluency has favorable vs. unfavorable downstream effects). We also derive prescriptive insights for (a) players of the edutainment industry whose very business hinges on curating appealing content (e.g., TED, Talks@Google, The Moth, Big Think, Spotify) and (b) communicators of all creeds wishing to broaden their reach and appeal (e.g., professors, scientists, politicians, journalists, bloggers, podcasters, content editors, online community managers). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).