Objective: It has been demonstrated that publicly available social media content may affect patient choice of physician, hospital, and medical facility. Furthermore, such content has the potential to affect professional reputation among peers and employers. Our goal was to evaluate the extent of unprofessional social media content among recent vascular surgery fellows and residents. Methods: The Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery directory was used to compile a list of graduating vascular surgery trainees from 2016 to 2018. Neutral Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts were used to search for publicly available information. All content was screened by two separate investigators for prespecified clearly unprofessional or potentially unprofessional content. Clearly unprofessional content included: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act violations, intoxicated appearance, unlawful behavior, possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia, and uncensored profanity or offensive comments about colleagues/work/patients. Potentially unprofessional content included: holding/consuming alcohol, inappropriate attire, censored profanity, controversial political or religious comments, and controversial social topics. Descriptive data were compiled and Fisher exact test was used for categorical comparisons. Results: There were 480 vascular surgeons identified. 325 (68%) were male, 456 (95%) held MD degrees, and 115 (24%) were integrated (0 + 5) vascular surgery residents. Of these, 235 had publicly identifiable social media accounts across all platforms. Sixty-one (26%) account holders had either clearly unprofessional or potentially unprofessional content. Eight accounts (3.4%) contained content categorized as clearly unprofessional: obvious alcohol intoxication in three Facebook accounts and uncensored profanity or offensive comments about colleagues/work/patients in one Facebook and five Twitter accounts. Potentially unprofessional content appeared in 58 accounts (25%) and included holding/consuming alcohol (29 accounts, 12.3%), controversial political comments (22 accounts, 9.4%), inappropriate/offensive attire (9 accounts, 3.8%), censored profanity (8 accounts, 3.4%), controversial social topics (6 accounts, 2.5%), and controversial religious comments (2 accounts,.9%). There was no significant difference in unprofessional content across sex, training paradigm(MD vs non-MD), or residency track (0 + 5 or 5 + 2; all P > .05). However, there was more unprofessional content for those who self-identified as vascular surgeons (33% vs 17%; P = .007). Conclusions: One-half of recent and soon to be graduating vascular surgery trainees had an identifiable social media account with more than one-quarter of these containing unprofessional content. Account holders who self-identified as vascular surgeons were more likely to be associated with unprofessional social media behavior. Young surgeons should be aware of the permanent public exposure of unprofessional content that can be accessed by peers, patients, and current/future employers.
