How Social Media Can Jeopardize or Jumpstart Your Medical Career

Hide what you do on social media, they said. Otherwise it could get you rejected from medical school, they said.

Well, they were right.

In a 2009 survey, of the 600 officers who review medical school and/or residency program applications who were interviewed, 53 (9%) routinely used social networking websites in their selection process and 24 (4%) actually rejected an applicant based on their online activity. While these numbers are relatively small, a whopping 53% said that if they were to check an applicant’s social media accounts and if they were to find unprofessional content there, it could compromise their admission.

As Scott M. Rodgers, M.D., associate dean for medical student affairs at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine said in an AAMC article, “Every student should assume that medical admissions committees DO look up applicants online and sometimes come across information about people that can either hurt or help a candidate.”

This belief is consistent with a plethora of articles that can be found along the lines of “Don’t Let Social Media Jeopardize Your Medical School Admission” and “Social Network Activity May Affect Medical School Acceptance” with a large portion of these articles devoted to preventing the retribution of a negative social media presence. Among the advice is keeping accounts private, controlling who can tag you in photos, limiting your searchability, and changing your name altogether online to avoid detection.

But what if there’s more to this story?

Maybe, Dr. Rodgers is correct: social media cannot just hurt you but it can also HELP you…if you do it right.

Social media has become a great tool in the past few decades. It allows people from all over the world to connect and share ideas with each other. Having a positive presence on social media can show to admissions committees that you can behave professionally, and perhaps may even show them more about how passionate you can be. This shows admissions committees that you can maintain a social presence similar to how you portray yourself in your application, which can help you if you are consistent with what they’re looking for in an applicant.


Kenneth Lu | Flickr | CC By 2.0

This is but one benefit to social media. If you look past the admissions process, you can see that the benefits are really boundless. Here are just some of the other great ways that having a good social media presence can benefit your life as a medical student.

1. Use Social Media as a Source of Advice

Pursuing a career in medicine is a long and arduous road. Luckily, there are plenty of people throughout social media offering advice to help make your journey better. As you progress through your education, you can contribute to this discussion and help others the way you wish you had been helped when going through the same process. Through this, you can gain rapport as a reliable source of advice and information.


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2. Use Social Media to Network

As the saying goes, “It’s not about what you know but who you know.” Yet, it can be hard to connect to people who can really help you out. Social media can help you overcome these barriers by making it easier to make connections. These relationships can either start online or start face-to-face and transition to online. For example, you could interact with a physician on Twitter and start to build a relationship. You could also make a brief in-person interaction last by following them on Twitter or making them a connection on LinkedIn (assuming they have one of these). If they connect with you on LinkedIn, they can see the parts of your resume that you post and you can let things go from there. You never know when the people you meet could help you, or you them, and creating such an online connection can facilitate this.


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3. Use Social Media as a Gateway to Opportunities

Having a strong social presence and making these connections can lead finding out about or offered opportunities that you may not have got otherwise. For example, if writing is your thing, it may lead you to an offer to write for a website. If entrepreneurship or technology is your thing, you can find out about opportunities to be involved in medtech start up companies. Perhaps you like advising others on the same route, you may get recruited to join an advising company. Postings about fellowships, contests, travel awards, meetings, and much more can be found on social media that may give you an edge your not-as-social-media-savvy counterparts.

4. Use Social Media as a Place to Share Your Work

If you want to be known for what you do, you need an audience. No better place to do that than online. If you write, do research, do photography or art, or simply excel as a student, social media allows you to share what you do with others. It can bring attention to ideas you wish to address such as the physician shortage or how it was found that differentiated cells can be induced to revert back to a stem cell-like state by treating them with acid though the finding has raised much skepticism within the scientific community. By doing so, you can gain credibility in whatever area you wish to promote and perhaps, help educate others.


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5. Use Social Media as a Support System

Medical school is hard. We all know this. But what can make it more bearable is commiserating with others and keeping each other uplifted and motivated. While you may love your classmates, surely they can drive you crazy at times especially when you spend all of your time around them. That’s where the internet comes in to introduce you to many others who are just like you.


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The Bottom Line: While you should heed the warnings that your social media presence could get you rejected from medical school, residency, or whatever, there are a lot of benefits to it as well. If you take the time to present yourself well, you can start to make a name for yourself even as a premed or medical student and it can help you make your education and career that much better!


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