Reports of medical student mentorship prevalence range between 26% and 77%. This broad range likely reflects the tendencies of studies to focus on specific populations of medical students. There is ...little consensus about the characteristics of mentoring relationships among medical students. The primary goal of this study was to determine the reported prevalence of mentorship among medical students in the United States. The secondary goals were to assess the desired qualities of and barriers to successful mentoring from a medical student perspective.
A cross-sectional online survey was administered via Qualtrics to all medical students at participating accredited medical schools from July 2018 to March 2019. The questionnaire contained a subsection of questions that assessed the existence of mentoring, facilitators, and barriers in finding a mentor, and the desired qualities of a successful mentor.
With a 94% completion rate, 369 (69%) of 532 medical students reported having a mentor. Adjusted analysis showed that fourth-year medical students were significantly more likely to have a mentor compared with first-year (odds ratio OR 2.65, 95% confidence interval CI 1.49-4.73,
0.001), second-year (OR 2.07, 95% CI 1.14-3.76,
0.016), and third-year medical students (OR 2.16, 95% CI 1.2-3.90,
0.011). Compassion (64%) was the most commonly reported quality in a successful mentoring relationship. Lack of time from mentor (75%) was the most commonly reported barrier.
This study may serve as a guide to fostering more supportive mentoring relationships. Each mentoring relationship should be tailored to the needs of the mentee, however.
This paper examines the contributors to a successful online educational program. In particular, it focuses on an online mentoring program called Tracking Canada's Past (TCP) which was implemented in ...three high schools in British Columbia, Canada, in 2003. Tracking Canada's Past investigated the application of online mentoring in the high school history curriculum through the use of Knowledge Forum® software–a web-based group workspace in which students could share and discuss their ongoing research with their online mentors and other students. The goal of TCP project was to help students understand the concept of history as a discipline through online mentoring and the use of “primary” sources, in addition to standard textbooks. There were 72 students and 16 online mentors involved in this study, approximately one mentor for each group of 5-11 students. Through a series of pre- and post-program surveys and interviews, data were collected on the students' backgrounds, expectations for specific mentoring functions, affective responses to mentoring, and the mentoring functions they recognized receiving. Volunteer mentors were also asked about the mentoring functions and the type of advice they would offer to their students. Findings from this study indicated that students' judgments of a successful online mentoring program were best predicted by the helpfulness of the questions mentors asked, the usefulness of the reading materials and/or web resources they recommended, the helpfulness of mentors in developing questions or ideas to investigate, the level of trust students placed in their mentors, and the helpfulness of the online workspace where students and mentors shared their ideas. These findings suggest that the most important determinants of a successful online mentoring program are those that online program designers have the ability to refine over time.
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