A single center evaluation of applicant experiences in virtual interviews across eight internal medicine subspecialty fellowship programs

ABSTRACT

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most graduate medical education (GME) training programs conducted virtual interviews for prospective trainees during the 2020–2021 application cycle. Many internal medicine (IM) subspecialty fellowship programs hosted virtual interviews for the first time with little published data to guide best practices.

To evaluate how IM subspecialty fellowship applicants perceived the virtual interview day experience.

We designed a 38-item questionnaire that was sent via email to applicants in eight IM subspecialty programs at a single tertiary academic medical center (University of California, San Francisco) from September–November, 2020.

Seventy-five applicants completed the survey (75/244, 30.7%), including applicants from all eight fellowship programs. Most survey respondents agreed that the length of the virtual interview day (mean = 6.4 hours) was long enough to gather the information they needed (n = 65, 86.7%) and short enough to prevent fatigue (n = 55, 73.3%). Almost all survey respondents agreed that they could adequately assess the clinical experience (n = 71, 97.3%), research opportunities (n = 72, 98.6%), and program culture (n = 68, 93.2%). Of the respondents who attended a virtual educational conference, most agreed it helped to provide a sense of the program’s educational culture (n = 20, 66.7%). Areas for improvement were identified, with some survey respondents reporting that the virtual interview day was too long (n = 11) or that they would have preferred to meet more fellows (n = 10).

Survey respondents indicated that the virtual interview was an adequate format to learn about fellowship programs. These findings can inform future virtual interviews for GME training programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual interview
• remote interviews
• fellowship interviews
• covid-19

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the UCSF Department of Medicine GME office and Fellowship Programs, including the Fellowship coordinators.

Disclosures

• LAH, LF, JAF, LSG, AQ, BSS, EW, CZ, GH, JMB have no relevant disclosures

• NE receives funding from Finch Therapeutics, Federation Bio, Assembly Biosciences and Freenome for microbiome-related research.

• ECH serves in a volunteer capacity on the registry advisory board of the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association, the International Clinical Council on FOP, and on the Fibrous Dysplasia Foundation Medical Advisory Board. ECH receives clinical trials research support through his institution from Clementia Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Ipsen company, and Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. ECH received prior clinical trials funding through his institution from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

• RRK has received licensing income from Voalte, Inc, which is unrelated to the current study.

Disclosure statement

·LAH, LF, JAF, LSG, AQ, BSS, EW, CZ, GH, JMB have no relevant disclosures.

·NE receives funding from Finch Therapeutics, Federation Bio, Assembly Biosciences and Freenome for microbiome related research.

·ECH serves in a volunteer capacity on the registry advisory board of the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association, the International Clinical Council on FOP, and on the Fibrous Dysplasia Foundation Medical Advisory Board. ECH receives clinical trials research support through his institution from Clementia Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Ipsen company, and Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. ECH received prior clinical trials funding through his institution from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

·RRK has received licensing income from Voalte, Inc, which is unrelated to the current study..