The UNMC College of Medicine has gotten into the media business.
When the Coalition of Physician Accountability offered national guidelines that all residency interviews should be conducted virtually, the UNMC Office for Graduate Medical Education and its 65 training programs asked the PR teams at both UNMC and Nebraska Medicine to create recruitment videos to tell their stories.
That’s traditionally, and perhaps more naturally, done during in-person visits by graduating medical students.
With 65 programs looking for a way to tell their stories, “our campus has never dealt with this explosive need on such a sudden basis,” said Chandra Are, MD, associate dean for graduate medical education.
College leaders found out on May 11 that resident interviews were going to be virtual nationwide, and by early June the GME Office had held committee meetings and met with the PR and IT experts.
“We were proactive,” Dr. Are said.
“For GME, it’s really important to have videos specific and tailored to each residency or fellowship for recruiting,” said Dr. Are.
Some elements of each video will be common for everyone such as highlighting the state of Nebraska, Omaha, the university.
“There are evergreen portions that everyone will need, but we did something very specific for GME,” Dr. Are said. “After that, the GME Office sent emails to all the programs asking them to tell us their needs.”
Responses varied. Some directors wanted one video, some six. Some wanted a day in the life of a resident, some wanted testimonials.
The process is ongoing, Dr. Are said. But he said he hoped that by November, when the bulk of residency interviews begin, the office’s early reaction and coordination with the public relations and IT departments will pay off with an exciting virtual experience for interviewees.
But preparing for virtual residency interviews cuts both ways.
“From the standpoint of our medical students who are looking to go to residency, we need to help them understand how to get a feel for a program,” said Wendy Grant, MD, associate dean for student affairs with the UNMC College of Medicine. “We’ll have to do coaching and help them network. If someone’s interviewing at the University of Iowa for pediatrics, how can we network our students so they can talk to people and get a feel for what it’s like at the University of Iowa?
“We’re also going to do mock virtual interviews and figure out how the students can best present themselves.
“Of course, we also are going through the usual advising process. We’re going to coordinate with each specialty that the students are applying to, because we as advisers for medical students need feedback from the GME world — specialty-specific, because each specialty is going to be different. That will heat up at the end of September and in October.”
Dr. Grant also hopes to use virtual technology to woo incoming medical students.
“We’re a state institution, so a large percentage of our students come from Nebraska. However, some who do not are valuable students to recruit. We are really good at recruiting in person, in part because everywhere you walk, everyone is friendly and says ‘Hi!’ or ‘Welcome!’ – that is just who we are in Nebraska.”
Recreating that sense of community virtually will be a challenge, she said.
“And we can’t take it for granted that just because we’re a state institution every student in Nebraska is going to want to come here,” she said. “That also is going to take active recruiting.”