To explore the characteristics of high-impact health science popularization short videos in public hospitals and the improvement path, and provide reference for improving the level of health science popularization in public hospitals.

Based on the list of " Ranking of China′s Hospitals in the Video Impact Ranking List of Provinces (2022.07)" released by the official account of the " Medical Policy Think Tank", selected the WeChat video channel of the tertiary grade A public hospitals in the east, middle and west regions of China, and then selected the health science popularization short video with the highest number of likes published as of September 22, 2023 from the WeChat video channel of each hospital as the research object. Using the communication index as the result variable and the title length, video duration, expert appearance, net-sense language, content type, and hot topic selection as conditional variables, a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was applied to explore the relationship between multiple conditional variables and their combinations and high-impact for health science popularization short videos.

A total of 90 short health science popularization videos were included, with 30 each from the East, Central, and West regions of China. The consistency of individual condition variables was<0.9, which was not a necessary condition for health science popularization short videos to obtain high-impact. Five configuration paths to increase the impact of health science popularization short videos were summarized, in which Path 1 attracted users through features such as expert appearances, hot topics, short titles, and avoiding the use of net-sense language; Path 2 attracted users by superimposing expert appearances and hot topics, and by adopting compact titles, short duration, and informative content types; Path 3 attracted users through long duration with expert appearances and informative content types, as well as detailed titles; Path 3 attracted users through long duration with expert appearances, informative content types, and detailed titles; Path 4 attracted users with detailed titles, expert appearances, and net-sense language, as well as short durations and exemplary content types; and Path 5 attracted users with long durations, expert appearances, and topical selections, and avoided net-sense language and employed informative content types. The consistency of the solution was 0.875 and the coverage of the solution was 0.555.

The impact of health science popularization short videos can be enhanced through different configuration paths. Public hospitals can use this as a reference, fully utilize their own resources, and adopt appropriate paths to produce health science popularization short videos according to different situational requirements, in order to improve the dissemination effect of health science popularization.

Hospitals, public; Health science popularization; WeChat Short video; Communication index; Configuration path; Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis