Background
Whether applying to medical school, residency programs, fellowships, or eventually for the role of a staff physician, interviews play a pivotal role for both applicants and programs in guiding their decision-making.
The financial costs associated with the interview process have been previously explored. Survey studies have reported that medical students applying to residency often needed to borrow money to cover the costs associated with interviews, with some medical students declining interview offers on the basis of financial costs [
1,
2]. These costs include those associated with application fees, travel, and accommodation for interviews, as well as costs associated with completing elective rotations at other programs [
1‐
3]. In addition to these financial costs, face-to-face interviews are accompanied by the opportunity costs of time taken away from clinical and academic activities. Studies have reported that general surgery residents applying for fellowship positions missed about 7 days of training days, which have been perceived by applicants and program directors to disrupt their program, decrease the time available for patient care, and increase workload for other residents [
4]. A similar opportunity cost applies to interviewers who need to take time away from their clinical practice to participate in the interview process [
3].
A less well-studied impact of face-to-face interviews is the environmental impact of long-haul flights, trains, and other forms of transportation. While these factors have not been directly evaluated as they apply to interview processes in medicine, there has been a recent emphasis on the role that healthcare practitioners play on climate change [
5,
6]. Solomon and LaRocque highlight the significant contribution to greenhouse gasses made by the healthcare sector and have posited that healthcare professionals have an ethical obligation to address climate change [
5]. Harmer and colleagues suggest that the World Health Organization (WHO) declares climate change as a public health emergency. Similar to infectious disease outbreaks, climate change has both direct and indirect effects on mortality, impacts health systems on a global scale, and requires urgent response to mitigate its ongoing detrimental effects [
6]. As physicians with an obligation to do no harm, it is prudent to identify and implement measures to minimize our carbon footprint.
In light of the aforementioned environmental, financial, and opportunity costs associated with face-to-face interviews, some programs have attempted to transition towards video-based interviewing with differing results [
7‐
11]. In a study of applicants given the option between video-based or face-to-face interviews, video-based interviews were primarily chosen when there were financial limitations, travel concerns, or interview conflicts [
11]. While video-based interviews were found to be a viable alternative to face-to-face interviews in a pilot study of medical students applying to the anesthesiology residency program, other studies view video-based interviews as an effective adjunct rather than a replacement to the traditional face-to-face interview [
9,
11]. Barriers to transitioning to video-based interviews have mainly been due to concerns of less rapport and being less effective in allowing applicants to represent themselves [
9].
Given this recent trend towards cost-minimization within the interview process and the need for active measures to combat climate change, an opportunity was identified to consolidate the current literature on video-based interviews. To our knowledge, there has not been a formal review of the literature on this topic. The objectives of this review will be to evaluate the extent of previous research in this field and summarize research findings to help guide future research. Specifically, our review will focus on the benefits and limitations of video-based interviews for both applicants and programs in healthcare fields, as well as the perceived barriers associated with transitioning from face-to-face interviews.
Discussion
Within the framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley, the goals of this scoping review are to examine the extent, range, and nature or research activity; to summarize and disseminate research findings; and to identify research gaps in the current literature [
12]. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore the benefits and limitations of video-based interviews for both applicants and programs in healthcare fields and identify the perceived barriers associated with transitioning away from face-to-face interviews.
While previous literature has explored the role of video-based interviews among applicants to medical school and residency training programs, it has been met with concerns over the lack of rapport and the inability of applicants to truly represent themselves [
7‐
11]. Given the costly nature of face-to-face interviews from an environmental, economic, and opportunistic point of view, it is prudent that the perceived barriers are better understood in order to facilitate practical changes that allow for an effective transition to video-based interviews. As such, this scoping review will allow for a better understanding of the extent of the literature on video-based fellowship interviews, directions for future research, and practical considerations for training programs looking to transition away from costly face-to-face interviews.
Limitations of this scoping review include the heterogeneity of research methodology that we expect to find in the included studies which will impact our choice of data analysis. In addition, due to the nature of a scoping review, an assessment of the quality of the included studies will not be performed.
Ethics and dissemination
No intervention or patient recruitment will be required for this study, and as such, research ethics board approval is not required. Following study completion, we plan to disseminate our results via publication in a peer-reviewed journal and/or conference presentation.
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