144 - Wildcat Wednesday: virtual changes to recruitment in response to COVID-19

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic brought many changes to graduate medical education including resident recruitment. The ability for students to experience residency programs was extremely limited. We developed a novel recruitment series called, “Wildcat Wednesday” that provided access to UK PM&R and provided tips and tools for a successful match. We surveyed our attendees to determine if this novel series was successful, how it could be improved and possibly adapted on an even larger national scale.

Design: We surveyed our attendees with an anonymous survey using Google forms. The survey was assessed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Kentucky, and did no meet federal criteria for human subject research. This survey was composed of 13 individual questions with a combination of multiple choice and open ended text boxes that was sent out via email.

Results: We received a total of 49 responses to our survey. Of those responses, 38.8% attended >5 sessions and 32.7% attended 3-5 sessions. A total of 77.6% of responses indicated that they were “Very Satisfied” with the organization and content of the session and 18.4% indicated they were “Satisfied”. When asking if this recruitment series influenced their decision to apply to the University of Kentucky Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation residency program, 73.5% indicated that this confirmed their decision to apply to UK PM&R and 24.5% indicated that, due to this recruitment series, that they would now apply to our residency.

Conclusions: This recruitment series provided a means for medical students to connect with an individual program and learn about the match process that was met with tremendous success during the COVID-19 pandemic as outlined in our survey response. This series could pioneer a new path for virtual recruitment in the future.