I would like to apologize for the paper “Prevalence of unprofessional social media content among young vascular surgeons.” Our intent was to empower surgeons to be aware and then personally decide what may be easily available for our patients and colleagues to see about us

social media. However, this was clearly not the result. We realize that the definition of professionalism is rapidly changing in medicine and that we need to support our trainees and surgeons as our society changes without the appearance of judgment. We tried to look at the

that our inclusion criteria for potentially controversial political comments attempted to include all view-points. We strongly support physicians advocating for legal and social policies to keep our patients safe and provide all with equal full access to care.

Also, we realize that our design had the potential for significant gender bias, particularly with male authors assessing the appropriateness of women’s as well as men’s clothing. To clarify our classification scheme, the so-called “inappropriate attire” category included both

term professionalism through the scope of what the general population, including patients or prospective employers, might perceive in publicly available accounts. I am sorry that we made our young surgeons feel targeted and that we were judgmental.
I would also like to clarify