Social media use by United States medical residency programs has been gaining traction in medical education over the last few years. However, the degree of influence of residency program social media presence on a U.S. residency applicant's decision to apply to or rank a residency program through the National Resident Matching Program is unknown. Here we present our 2019 post-match quality improvement survey data from newly matched residents to Internal Medicine and Transitional Year residency programs at one community-based hospital. Our findings demonstrate that modern applicants value program social media profiles as additional information when determining whether to apply to or rank a residency program. As more U.S. graduate medical education programs move towards a virtual interview format, social media may play an increasingly important role in resident recruitment.

Social media use across the health professions has significantly expanded in recent years. Specific attention has been paid to both the value of social media use in graduate medical education with residency program twitter accounts. More recently, social media has been examined for its role in supporting the rapid expansion of information exchange and connection across digital and virtual platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the ongoing response to the pandemic, the 2020-2021 residency application cycle is anticipated to be a completely virtual interview process. Here, we draw from our collective experiences managing, maturing, and maximizing social media accounts for residency programs and GME to provide practical tips for using social media for the upcoming virtual interview season.

edical professionals and trainees 1,2 have adopted the use of Twitter 3 for medical education, 4,5 support, and advocacy, which has resulted in an online community often referred to as Medical Twitter (colloquially as #MedTwitter). The authors recognize an emerging utility of Medical Twitter in mentorship, coaching, and sponsorship, which has only become more necessary in the current climate of social distancing. We will discuss opportunities to use Twitter to enhance and promote mentoring relationships in medicine, particularly for those trainees from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds who might not otherwise find mentors in their institutions.