Scrolling to Success: Leveraging Social Media to Highlight Wellness Culture in Orthopedic Surgery Residency Programs

Background Burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment, profoundly affects interprofessional collaboration. Despite rising burnout rates, there is a paucity of research regarding the use of social media to support wellness culture, particularly among orthopedic surgery residents. Methods A list of all US orthopedic surgery residency programs was compiled through the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and associated social media accounts were identified. Authors tallied and organized all posts into these categories: work-life balance, attendance to physical health team building activities, healthy work environments, activities or lectures designed to promote wellness, images that imply participating in wellness activities, educational events that include wellness, and resident spotlight. All posts were included up to November 19, 2022. Results Out of 197 programs, 110 (55.8%) had a dedicated Instagram account, 10 (5.07%) had a specific Facebook page, and 30 (15.2%) had an X (formerly Twitter) account for their residency programs, generating 13,203 posts for analysis. Across all three social media platforms, posts addressing work-life balance constituted the highest percentage of wellness-related content (n=1211,22.98%), followed by images implying participation in wellness activities (n=1182,22.43%) and promoting a healthy work environment (n=849,16.11%). Specifically, for Instagram, programs ranked within the top 100 on Doximity had significantly more posts and followers compared to those ranked over 100 (92.64 vs. 59.7, p<0.001; 1680.72 vs 1125.02, p<0.001). Additionally, accounts linked to programs with 25 or more residents had significantly more posts and followers compared to those with 20 or fewer residents (97.54 vs. 61.03, p<0.001; 1726.87 vs 1196.32, p<0.001). Conclusion Social media possesses substantial potential to promote and emphasize wellness among residents. However, its utilization for this purpose remains underdeveloped, particularly in smaller and lower-ranked orthopedic surgery training programs. Further research is needed to determine the most effective ways to harness online activity to highlight and enhance wellness efforts among trainees.