Understanding the Intersection of Social Media and Mentorship in Surgery and Medicine

Mentorship is a key component of success in surgery that benefits both mentors and mentees. It is associated with increased academic productivity, funding, leadership roles, and career advancement. For students and trainees, early mentorship may play a role in specialty or career selection, scholarly output, and residency or fellowship match. Until recently, mentor-mentee dyads have connected through traditional communication channels; however, in an increasingly virtual world, academic communities are adopting new ways to communicate, including over social media platforms. Given its ability to transcend constraints of geography, hierarchy, and time, social media can be used as a communication tool to establish and improve mentoring relationships. Specifically, social media can be used to strengthen preexisting mentoring relationships, identify new mentorship opportunities both locally and remotely, and facilitate modern mentorship models, such as team mentorship and near-peer mentorship. Furthermore, it increases the durability of mentor-mentee relationships and helps to expand and diversify mentorship networks, which may especially benefit female and underrepresented in medicine students and trainees. Despite the many advantages of social media, it is not a replacement for traditional local mentorship and must always be used in an intentional and professional manner. In this chapter, not only do we discuss the benefits of using social media for mentorship, but we also explore some of the challenges of balancing virtual and local mentorship, recognize potential concerns raised by social media use, and provide suggestions on how to leverage social media to optimize your virtual mentorship experience.