Love at First Click: Surgery Residency Websites in the Virtual Era

Abstract

Frequently, a residency program's website is the first interaction students interested in surgery have with the program. In the setting of virtual interviews for residency in 2020, the online availability of program information is of heightened importance. We sought to assess how academic versus community-based general surgery residency programs compared with respect to certain details on their websites. A total of n = 268 surgery residency programs were investigated. Our database of website characteristics included: direct link to residency website from the American Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) program page, resident research requirement, listing of residents' publications, availability of residents' demographic information, program alumni information, board pass rates, attrition rate, detail of educational/academic activities, residents' evaluation methods, diversity, and mentorship. Inter-group analyses between academic and community-based programs were performed using Pearson's Chi-squared test. Academic and community-based general surgery residency program websites were compared based on twelve (12) different parameters. Statistically significant differences were observed for eight of these comparisons: direct website access from ACGME (p = 0.007), research highlighted (p < 0.001), resident research requirement (p = 0.002), resident demographic information available (p=0.004), alumni information (p = 0.005), resident evaluation methods (p = 0.016), diversity (p < 0.001), and mentorship (p = 0.012). Across these domains, academic programs had more information available on their websites than the community programs did. The program websites did not differ significantly based on the frequency of mentioning resident publications, board pass rate, attrition rate, or resident education. Many general surgery programs are lacking detailed information on their websites. The amount of website information available on general surgery residency programs differs when comparing academic and community-based programs.