Evaluation of Accredited Trauma, Surgical Critical Care, and Acute Care Surgery Fellowship Websites.

OBJECTIVES: Surgical residents are increasingly pursuing fellowships and rely heavily on fellowship programs' web sites as a primary source of information. Accessibility, quality, and content of a program web site can encourage or deter an applicant from applying to a particular program. The goal of this study was to perform an analysis of trauma, surgical critical care, and acute care surgery fellowship program web sites.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A list of trauma, surgical critical care, and acute care surgery fellowship programs was obtained from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST) web site. The existence of a functional hyperlink in the EAST program directory and a systematic Google search was assessed to determine web site accessibility. Twenty-one content criteria were used to evaluate accessible web sites.

RESULTS: The EAST directory contained 102 fellowship programs. Ninety-one programs had web sites accessible through a Google search. No web site contained all 21 criteria. Only 29 web sites contained at least half of the evaluated content criteria. The most common data point included was program description (97%), while role of seeing patients in clinic (4%) was the least common criteria present.

CONCLUSIONS: Many programs in the EAST directory lack functional links and accessible web sites. Content that has been deemed important to applicants is lacking in varying degrees. Incorporation of this missing content may benefit both applicants and programs, allowing for more informed decision-making when choosing a program, thus promoting better fit of fellows with programs during the application process.