The Role of Social Media on Orthopaedic Residency Application Process during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background: With the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical community saw many changes to practices and policies including medical education and the residency application process. Traditionally medical students in their fourth year of their training are allotted time for away rotations at an institution of their choosing. As a result of COVID-19, many medical schools were forced to eliminate away rotations from their curriculum due to concerns about student safety. This led to the advent of social media outlets designed for the specific purpose of providing medical students with information about residency programs in an effort to recruit interested candidates. With virtual meetings, online communications, and social media platforms all becoming a cornerstone in management of day-to-day hospital functioning this seemed the most appropriate way of adapting to the pandemic while still finding a way to communicate with medical students interested in orthopaedic surgery (9). We hypothesize that the advent of social media accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic would play a role in the orthopaedic residency application process. Question/Purpose: Our question was to determine the role of social media on the orthopaedic surgery residency application process during the COVID-19 era. Patients/Methods: An electronic survey consisting of 12 multiple-choice questions was created to query medical students applying to the field of orthopaedics about the role of social media on their application process. The survey link was emailed to all orthopaedic residency applicants available through the ERAS system. Conclusion: Based on our results it appears applicants may be using social media accounts as a tool to get onto a residency program’s “radar” rather than to obtain meaningful information about a program. Medical students do however find zoom meetings and open houses to be meaningful and provide valuable insight for their application process.