Exploration of mentees’ perception of mentoring among Undergraduate medical students: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: A successful mentorship program promotes personal and professional growth. Experienced mentors provide a nurturing relationship with the mentee. Lack of emotional support with highly expected competency pressurizes students’ daily lives. A well-integrated mentorship program has enabled the psychosocial skills and humanistic attitudes among medical students. Mentor mentee pairing system and the knowledge of mentees’ perception of mentoring were found to provide a satisfactory mentorship program. Though a number of studies on mentoring medical students were done elsewhere in India, the knowledge on mentee’s perception of mentors, mentorship program and mentor-mentee expectations were lacking in south India, hence this study was chosen. Objectives: To analyze mentees’ perception of mentors; To analyze the mentees’ perception of the mentorship program; To analyze the mentees’ perception of mentor-mentee relation. Methodology: This single-center, observational cross-sectional study was done with a sample size of 241. Undergraduate medical Students of all phases except the first year, who were willing to participate in the study, filled out the 15 items questionnaire. The questionnaire on an exploration of mentees’ perception of mentors was validated with the internal consistency of 0.65 (Cronbach’s alpha) after Principal compound analysis. The questionnaire was designed using google Forms and distributed through WhatsApp. Results: The response was tabulated and analyzed as frequency using Microsoft Excel. Most medicos prefer their mentor to be friendly and approachable to enhance their academic development. They expect the mentor to counsel, and coach them to improve their academic and social confidence. Mentees prefer to have specialist mentor. They do not prefer to have a mentor of same gender and the same mentor throughout the curriculum. Most of them feel that impractical expectations from the mentor as a disadvantage. They agree that mentoring is an everlasting relationship and prefer to have weekly, one-on-one meetings. They expect the mentor to help in developing strategies to solve a problem and agree to share their academic progress with their parents. Mentees agree that mentor expects mutual respect from their mentees. Conclusion: The knowledge of the perception of mentees on the mentors, mentorship program, and mentor-mentee expectations can enable the mentors to adapt to the mentee’s needs and promote effective mentoring among undergraduate medical students.

Keywords

• mentor
• medical students
• perception
• questionnaire