In August 2022, the Neurology® Resident & Fellow Section (RFS) launched a blog series called SIGNposts to encourage greater medical student interest in and exploration of neurology. We aimed to evaluate the impact of this initiative on underrepresented groups.

Neurology continues to experience significant gaps in diverse representation, particularly in leadership roles and within certain subspecialties. Initiatives are needed to promote career exploration among underrepresented groups.

We solicited blog posts, up to 1,000 words in length, from medical students on topics pertaining to neurology training. We performed an analysis of author demographics, thematic content, and metrics of engagement for blogs accepted and published on the Neurology® RFS website. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics.

From 2022-2024, 12 manuscripts were submitted and 9 blogs were published on the Neurology® RFS website. A total of 13/14 authors were trainees. Of those, over half (54%) were fourth-year medical students, 15% were third-year medical students, and 31% were international medical graduates. All blogs were authored by female medical students or graduates, 4 listed an additional female as second author, and 1 listed a male as senior author. Over half of the blogs (56%) discussed the importance of mentorship, 33% mentioned global neurology, and 22% highlighted leadership or community outreach. Other topics included experiences in neurology with end-of-life care and exposure to neurology procedures such as EEG, EMG, and transcranial doppler. The SIGNposts blog series received 67,765 total impressions (number of content displays to users) in a 2-year period and 1,585 total engagements (number of content interactions) on “X” social media platform.

Initiatives like SIGNposts can help promote career exploration in neurology among medical students from underrepresented groups. This 2-year initiative demonstrated continued interest and involvement from female medical students from the United States and international medical graduates, suggesting its potential to diversify the neurology pipeline.