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Emergency physicians on the frontlines of the COVID‐19 pandemic are first‐hand witnesses to the direct impact of health misinformation and disinformation on individual patients, communities, and public health at large. Therefore, emergency physicians naturally have a crucial role to play to steward factual information and combat health misinformation. Unfortunately, most physicians lack the communications and social media training needed to address health misinformation with patients and online, highlighting an obvious gap in emergency medicine training. We convened an expert panel of academic emergency physicians who have taught and conducted research about health misinformation at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, on May 13, 2022. The panelists represented geographically diverse institutions including Baystate Medical Center/Tufts University, Boston Medical Center, Northwestern University, Rush Medical College, and Stanford University. In this article, we describe the scope and impact of health misinformation, introduce methods for addressing misinformation in the clinical environment and online, acknowledge the challenges of tackling misinformation from our physician colleagues, demonstrate strategies for debunking and prebunking, and highlight implications for education and training in emergency medicine. Finally, we discuss several actionable interventions that define the role of the emergency physician in the management of health misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health misinformation continues to proliferate on social media, and corrective actions have been deemed effective in countering online misinformation. Such corrections are especially effective when performed by healthcare professionals who are considered experts in the field. Informed by third-person effect and social norm theories, this study investigates the role of third-person perception and subjective norms in promoting healthcare professionals' intention to correct and report online health misinformation. This study also examines the effects of exposure to health misinformation across four platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp) on third-person perception and subjective norms. The survey data collected from 377 medical doctors and nurses in the United States showed that subjective norms predicted all five corrective actions (i.e., public priming, private priming, public rebuttal, private rebuttal, and reporting). Interestingly, the third-person perception was found to reduce private rebuttal intention. Moreover, exposure to misinformation on Facebook triggered third-person perception and subjective norms, whereas Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp showed significant negative associations with third-person perception. These findings provide new insights into the application of third-person effect and social norm theories and suggest the need for tailored interventions to encourage health professionals' participation in combating health misinformation on social media. • Subjective norm enhances healthcare professionals' intention to correct and report online health misinformation. • Third-person perception reduces the intention to correct misinformation through private rebuttal. • Exposure to health misinformation on Facebook triggers subjective norms and third-person perceptions. • Health misinformation encountered on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger attenuates third-person perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Healthcare professionals can correct health misinformation on social media. • Public methods of correction are preferred by healthcare professionals. • Perceived organizational support indirectly predicts intention to correct. • Organizational support theory can augment theory of planned behavior. Few studies examine how human information sources correct health misinformation on social media. This study investigates the proportion of healthcare professionals who intend to correct health misinformation on social media using various social correction methods, such as private priming, public priming, private rebuttal, and public rebuttal. It also uses the Theory of Planned Behavior and Organizational Support Theory to predict factors associated with healthcare professionals' intention to correct health misinformation on social media. An online survey conducted in October 2020 with 377 nurses and doctors in the U.S. shows that they mostly intend to perform public priming and public rebuttal when correcting health misinformation on social media. Moreover, mediation analysis showed that perceived organizational support indirectly predicts intention to correct health misinformation on social media through two sets of mediators. First, instrumental attitude and affective attitude mediated the association between perceived organizational support and intention to correct health misinformation on social media using private priming, public priming, and public rebuttal. Second, affective attitude, descriptive norm, and perceived behavioral control mediated the association between perceived organizational support and intention to correct health misinformation on social media using private rebuttal. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]