Mentorship program in a private medical college of Eastern India: evaluation, appraisal and recommendations

Abstract

Background: Mentorship programs are becoming increasingly common in undergraduate medical education all over the world. However, very few medical colleges are running mentorship programs in India. A mentorship program was introduced in I Q City Medical College for the first year MBBS students to help them cope up with the stress of the new environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the mentorship program with regard to its efficacy, utility, limitation and potential for improvement after successful completion of one year of the program.Methods: It was a questionnaire based cross sectional study including 143 mentees and 15 mentors conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital for five months from November 2019 to March 2020. The feedback was collected with a pre validated questionnaire containing 10 questions (8 close ended and 2 open ended). Feedback of closed ended questions were obtained by using a 5-point Likert scale (1 to 5) where 5 indicated ‘Strongly Agree’ and 1 indicated ‘Strongly Disagree’.Results: Out of 143 mentees, 124 (86.7%) and out of 15 mentors, 10 (66.7%) mentioned that mentorship program is necessary for the welfare of the students. However, it was also noted that better communication and frequent meetings can improve the outcome of the program.Conclusion: Mentorship program is deemed essential, however, a well-structured framework and dedicated time from both mentors and mentees will make the program more successful. This type of feedback evaluation is however important to validate such program.

Keywords

• mentee
• mentor
• feedback evaluation