How Well do We Represent Ourselves: an Analysis of Cardiology Fellowships Website Content

Abstract

Background: The Internet is the primary source of information for prospective cardiology fellowship aspirants. The objective of this study was to evaluate cardiology fellowship programs' online profile. Materials & methods: Two independent reviewers accessed 221 US based cardiology fellowship program websites obtained through Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database for pre-selected 20 criteria. The update status of websites was assessed using 6-point criteria. Results: Only 25 (11.3%) websites were fully up-to-date; 23 (10.4%) fulfilled 80% of the 20-point criteria and 85 (38.5%) program websites had fewer than 50% of the criteria listed. Conclusion: Most cardiology fellowship program websites lack crucial details. In this technology driven age, efforts should be made to ensure updated websites.

Content and Accessibility of United States Medical School Websites During COVID-19 and the Online Interview Season

“…As medical school applicants apply to, interview at, and ultimately decide which institution to attend, careful planning and research is essential. The internet is easily accessible and multiple studies have shown the importance of websites in recruitment for residency, 5,8,9 which likely applies to students applying for medical school as well. This will likely be of growing importance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as in-person methods of evaluating prospective institutions are being replaced with virtual means.…”

“…As the data contained in residency websites can be subjective, we created a standardized process to evaluate the websites, similar to the previous studies in other specialties. [4][5][6][7][8] First, we only searched for the presence or absence of items, with no attempt made to grade the quality or accuracy of the content. Second, any information that was not directly listed on medical school website was excluded, such as links to external materials or websites, which usually contained general, non-speci c information rather than medical school-speci c information.…”

“…Prior studies have evaluated these factors among residency and fellowship programs, resulting in various recommendations for areas of improvement among their respective program websites to both help applicants and increase recruitment. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Comprehensive websites can help applicants make informed decisions, providing them with access to information they deem important. For the application cycle of 2019 to 2020, medical school applicants applied to an average of 17 medical schools despite according to data recently released by the Association of American Medical colleges.…”

North American urogynecology fellowship programs: value of program website content

“…The methodology for this study was developed from several recently published program website analysis studies [2][3][4][5][6]. Our study did not incorporate the use of human or animal subjects and used publicly available information on the internet.…”

“…Many studies have evaluated the quality and comprehensiveness of program websites in different medical subspecialties [2][3][4]. All of the studies concluded that residency and fellowship websites have significant room for improvement despite their vital role in the decision-making process.…”