#plasticsurgeryresidency: Social Media in the time of COVID-19 and its Impact on the Future of Academic Plastic Surgery
Zachary Gala, MD1, Haripriya Ayyala, MD2, Priya Mansukhani, BS2, Kristin Riddle, BS2, Ed Lee, MD2.
1Rutgers RWJ/NJMS, Newark, NJ, USA, 2Rutgers NJMS, Newark, NJ, USA.
BACKGROUND: Social media platforms are becoming mainstream in plastic surgery and increasingly utilized by plastic surgery academic programs. The authors investigate the Instagram accounts of plastic surgery residency programs to better understand how institutions utilize social media. Furthermore, we discuss how COVID-19 prompted academic plastic surgery programs to use social media and online resources to conduct activities during the 2020-2021 Match cycle, and its potential implications on the future of plastic surgery residency.METHODS: The official Instagram account for each plastic surgery residency program was identified. Posts during a one-year period (March 2018-March 2019) were analyzed. Total number of posts for subject content pertaining to faculty (attending physicians), residents, operating room (OR) cases, patient-specific stories, residency program/education, and “other” were recorded. Followers of these pages were also analyzed and categorized.RESULTS: Fifty of 79 (63.3%) programs had official Instagram accounts. In total, 276 posts were about faculty (mean = 5.52), 722 posts about residents (mean = 14.44), 100 posts pertaining to OR cases (mean = 2), 12 patient-specific posts (mean = 0.24), 278 posts regarding the academic program/education (mean = 5.56), and 1388 posts classified as “other” (mean = 27.76). “Other” posts contained a vast array of content, including public relations, holiday parties, promotions, research publications, conferences, awards, special events, grand rounds, and medical staff announcements. Most followers for all programs included affiliated and non-affiliated attending physicians, residents, and medical students.
CONCLUSIONS: Social media is an invaluable tool to reach a broad audience. Instagram is becoming more heavily utilized by plastic surgery programs to promote their unique attributes, including educational activities, faculty and resident profiles, and research achievements. With the COVID-19 pandemic, academic plastic surgery was forced to re-construct its entire away-rotation, interview, and match process to an entirely online-based system. Programs utilized social media to the advantage of both programs and applicants, as a means of portraying and promoting content to the masses, which would be otherwise inaccessible with the cancellation of in-person activities. Future research could investigate how social media influences patients on choosing and/or receiving care, and how online content affects medical students and residents in pursuing the next step of their education/training.
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