In Reply: Neurosurgical Videos and Social Media: Publish, Post, or Perish

To the Editor: I read with interest the letter from Chaurasia et al1 in response to my editorial, "Neurosurgical Videos and Social Media: Publish, Post, or Perish."2 The authors agree that social media can provide an excellent environment for sharing surgical videos, complementing the peer-reviewed videos, including neurosurgeon collections, that are published by the neurosurgical journals. I was pleased to read that my practice of pairing publication links with videos, thereby providing clinical evidence to support the videos and reducing bias, was viewed positively. The authors recommend professionalism in posting and discuss the issue of crowdsourcing or "community peer review," which can be both encouraging and discouraging to neurosurgeons who share videos. In short, there seems to be agreement that social media offers broad exposure to those neurosurgeons eager to share their work and provides easy access to large, interested audiences. I am firmly committed to this idea of a virtual residency, where students of neurosurgery worldwide can come together on social media to learn, train, and elevate their technical skills. We actively produce numerous such offerings here at Barrow Neurological Institute, including the Seven Series, Barrow Base Camp, and webinars. Collectively, these offerings create a virtual residency that can educate and empower aspiring neurosurgeons while transcending the restrictions of time, travel, prescribed rotations, and expense. It is my hope that virtual residencies on social media will push residents around the world to technical proficiency and raise the bar of excellence for the field.