Cross-sectional study on utilisation of social media by regional anaesthesia and acute pain medicine fellowship programs in the United States.

Abstract

Background and aims: Social media provides a platform for physicians helping them change the practice in anaesthesiology as it promotes both personal and professional growth. In this cross-sectional study, we identify social media presence and engagement of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Medicine (RAAPM) fellowship programs, specifically on Twitter (Twitter Inc., San Francisco, CA) and Instagram (Meta Platforms Inc., Menlo Park, CA). This article presents current evidence about social media presence and engagement of ACGME-accredited RAAPM fellowship programs on Twitter and Instagram. These findings could potentially help cultivate greater social media engagement in the RAAPM community and improve recruitment of prospective applicants.

Material and methods: The list of ACGME-accredited RAAPM fellowship programs for the academic year 2020-2021 was obtained from the ACGME website. Accounts were searched by reviewing each program's website for profile links and by querying for the name of the program directly on Twitter and Instagram. Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine accounts were analysed for posts pertaining to RAAPM elements, and RAAPM fellowship-specific accounts were investigated. Accounts that were solely focused on an anaesthesiology residency were excluded. All posts over the academic year period of 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021 were analyzed.

Results: While many programs had active departmental social media accounts during our study, there was a dearth of RAAPM-related output (3.4% of tweets and 2.7% Instagram posts). Furthermore, only 10% of programs had RAAPM fellowship-specific Twitter accounts, of which only 5% of programs were active. Finally, there were no RAAPM fellowship-specific Instagram accounts.

Conclusions: While there is robust use of social media by departmental accounts, there is a paucity of RAAPM-related content and RAAPM fellowship-specific social media accounts. The current gap provides valuable opportunities for future investigations into the cyber footprint and innovative engagement strategies for the RAAPM community.