1308. Virtual ID Fellowship Interviewing & DEI: A Win for Everyone?


 
 
 Graduate medical education programs shifted to an all-virtual recruitment in 2020. There is little published on the impact of this shift on the demographics of applicants, particularly in a field such as infectious disease where there are typically fewer applicants than available spots. Program directors were forced to make a radical change to their typical recruitment process. This study illustrates a single-center experience with virtual ID fellowship interviewing.
 
 
 
 Using the Program Director Work Station on Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS), we reviewed our program specific data from 2018-2021. We extracted the total number of applicants, the self-identified race/ethnicity of the applicants, their medical school type (US MD grad, DO grad, Non-US grad), their sex, and their location. We used simple descriptive statistics to identify trends and comparisons from in-person interviewing (2018 and 2019) and virtual interviewing (2020 and 2021).
 
 
 
 The number of virtual ID fellowship applicants to our program increased in 2021 by 24% compared to in-person applicants in 2019 (123 vs. 99). This exceeds what a program would expect from the 13% nation-wide increase in ID applicants in 2021 as there were a record 404 total applicants compared to 356 total applicants in 2019 We also saw an increase in Black or African American applicants; 13 Black applicants in 2021 compared to 2 Black applicants in 2019. We saw a stable rate of applicants who self-identified Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin; 18 in 2019 and 17 in 2021. as Notably, we also saw an increase in geographic diversity of our applicants as we drew applicants from 22 states in 2019 (Figure 1a) and 35 states in 2021 (Figure 1b). Additionally, in 2020 we matched two applicants from geographically distant states (Ohio and Colorado) and in 2021 we matched one (Mississippi). Figure 1aFigure 1b
 
 
 
 Virtual interviewing was advantageous for our infectious disease fellowship program at Temple University. We saw a 24% increase in applicants, had more Black applicants and more geographic diversity in our applicants. Furthermore, we were able to recruit these applicants into matched fellows.
 
 
 
 All Authors: No reported disclosures.
