Expectation of mentees toward mentoring in medical education - An observational study

Abstract

Background: Mentoring the students helps to remold ones both personal and professional life. A good mentor can always bring an astonishing development in the life of a mentee. Although the mentoring in medical school dates back to the 1970s, its application evolved in late 1990s. The main goal of mentoring medical students is to provide a proper academic guidance, personal support and to achieve professional development of the students. To achieve these, an active participation of both the mentor and mentee is very much essential. Aims and Objectives: Our study aimed to know the expectations of mentees toward mentoring program and also the effectiveness of the program that they had undergone for one academic year during their first MBBS. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted in Sapthagiri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre (SIMSRC), Bengaluru, for a period of 1 month. The study group comprises 150 students studying in the 1st year MBBS at SIMSRC, Bengaluru. A panel discussion was held for 2 h to discuss the benefits of mentoring followed by which a self-prepared semi-structured questionnaire consisting of both open- and closed-ended shared to the volunteer subjects through online Google Forms. The data were extracted through Microsoft Excel and data analysis was carried through Microsoft Excel. Results: In our study, around 90% of the students had attended all the mentoring sessions among them 94% of the students opine mentoring is required, 97% of the students agrees their mentors are approachable, 88% of the students prefer 1:10 mentor-mentee ratio, and the remaining 12% of them opine 1:20 mentor-mentee ratio would suffice. About 58% of the students feel mentors to be chosen by them and 42% feels the mentors to be randomly allotted to them. About 82% of them have improved in their academics after the mentor-mentee meeting whereas 18% did not show any changes. Conclusion: Most of the students prefer direct contact with the mentors and one-to-one mentoring, preferred timely meeting is more effective than frequent meeting preferably after each internals and mentoring helps in academic as well as overall development of mentees and most of mentees prefer to choose their mentor of choice for effective mentorship.