A comprehensive analysis of pediatric gastroenterology fellowship website content

Background: As the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of online recruitment, program websites (PW) have become increasingly instrumental for applicants to evaluate fellowship opportunities. A robust pediatric gastroenterology PW can aid applicants by illustrating a program's mission and educational opportunities. Amongst the various criteria that prospective applicants assess, perceived inclusivity and physician well-being are essential components contributing to program culture and positively influence ranking decisions. We conducted a comprehensive audit of pediatric gastroenterology PWs to identify potential opportunities to improve PW content, better serve applicants, and ultimately facilitate a more informed match process. Methods: This study evaluated 2020-2021 ACGME accredited pediatric gastroenterology PWs for the presence of binary informational, diversity, and wellness categories. We assessed the presence of 28 informational variables derived from previously published website analyses with added specialty-specific variables. Our study also considered three categories for evaluating diversity and inclusion that were adapted from inclusive online graduate medical education recruitment strategies. Wellness content was evaluated using four categories adapted from wellness curriculums and pertinent categories in previously published studies. We defined websites with 70% or more of the investigated 28 informational categories as “comprehensive websites,” a threshold used in prior studies. GraphPad software (GraphPad Prism 7, GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA) was utilized for all univariate analyses using Spearman Correlation's test, with statistical significance defined as p-value <0.05. Results: Of the 64 programs which had functional fellowship websites, 48.4% had a “comprehensive website.” Overall, programs on average filled 59.7% of all categories. 46.9% of the programs had information pertaining to at least one of the three assessed diversity categories and 56.3% of the programs had content relating to at least one of the four wellness categories. The prevalence of each category is shown in Figure 1. We found a positive association between having a more complete website and more diversity-identified website (p=0.024) or a wellness-identified website (p=0.005). Discussion & Conclusion: In an increasingly virtual world, PWs serve as an applicant's first impression, influencing the perception of a program's key initiatives. While our results suggest that PWs vary greatly in comprehensiveness, overall, pediatric gastroenterology PWs are lacking in all three of our evaluated categories. Our study found that more complete websites also tend to fill more of the diversity and wellness categories. This trend suggests that a progression towards a more complete PW includes both diversity and wellness components, rather than viewing them as separate categories. The incomplete nature of pediatric gastroenterology PWs is notable. Traditional in-person recruitment strategies allowed applicants to explore hospital facilities, interact with diverse faculty, and observe colleague camaraderie. Hence, in the era of heightened virtual recruitment, it would be beneficial for programs to effectively translate their initiatives to digital mediums. It behooves programs to highlight efforts they have made toward these important areas, both to represent themselves accurately and better cater to the interests of their prospective applicants. Ultimately, PWs are cost-effective tools in recruitment for pediatric gastroenterology fellowships and should be optimized to capture key tenets of a program's culture. By doing so, programs can strategically align with the interests and values of prospective applicants, empowering applicants to make more informed decisions that foster better matches.