Alignment of roles of near-peer mentors for medical students underrepresented in medicine with medical education competencies: a qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundMedical student learning experiences should facilitate progressive development of competencies required for practice. Medical school training opportunities have traditionally focused on acquiring medical knowledge and patient care competencies while affording less opportunity to receive feedback on practice-based improvement and system-based practice competencies. The Prematriculation program at the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth Campus (UM MSD) utilized near-peer mentors to support the transition of students underrepresented in medicine, including American Indian/ Alaska Natives (AI/AN) and those from rural backgrounds, into medical school. The purpose of this study is to better define the role of near-peer mentors and explore the alignment of near-peer mentorship with the ACGME core competencies.MethodsAn important component of the Prematriculation program, designed to prepare incoming under-represented students for medical school, was the inclusion of near-peer mentors. The six near-peer mentors participated in semi-structured interviews or focus groups within 1 year of serving as a near-peer mentor. Themes emerged from open-coding of the transcripts.ResultsThe near-peer mentors drew on their own experiences to transmit information that supported the socialization of the matriculating students into medical school. Direct benefits to the mentors included solidifying their own understanding of medical knowledge and execution of procedural skills. Mentors provided examples of benefits related to their own development of interpersonal communication and professionalism skills. Operating in the context of the program provided opportunities to engage mentors in practice-based improvement and system-based practice.ConclusionsServing as a near-peer mentor offers significant benefits to medical students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine. By taking on the peer mentoring leadership role, students progressed toward the competencies required of an effective physician. Given the importance of acquiring these competencies, it is worth considering how near-peer mentoring can be applied more broadly across the medical school curriculum.

Peer-mentoring na educação em saúde: quais as suas aplicações, limitações e estratégias para o sucesso?

“…Outros cenários foram apresentados pelos estudos elencados nesta revisão, como treinamento de profissionais atuantes em centros especializados no tratamento de cânceres (Phipps et al, 2018), especialidade médica em ultrassonografia (Smith et al, 2018), pós-graduação e pesquisa biomédica (Lewis, Martina, McDermott, Chaudron, et al, 2017), residência médica em Medicina de Família e Comunidade (Prunuske et al, 2019), serviços de saúde com atendimento de clínica médica e medicina do trabalho (Blake et al, 2020) e, por fim, em programas de assistência à saúde e imunização (Hossain et al, 2021).…”

TVET Graduate Employability: Mismatching Traits Between Supply and Demand

“…Instructors should be armed with good leadership skills and the right mindset so that they will be competent enough to train and deliver their knowledge and skills to trainees. Prunuske, Houss, and Kosobuski (2019) and Fard et al (2020) pointed out that, it is important to have an instructor during the internship where mentor-peer will transmit the experience, knowledge, and professionalism and at the same time knowledge could be applied broadly across the school curriculum. Xiong, Lin, Li, and Wang (2016) stated that instructors or leaders could react as mediators, based on their roles in their hierarchy or positions in order to influence subordinates to fulfil their job satisfaction.…”

“…In this study, it is necessary to know how instructors play their roles as mediators in developing student competency. In the context of mentor-mentee, the researchers (Cha et al, 2020;Prunuske et al, 2019;Ward et al (2020) advocated that mentorship programme helped participants improve their professional skills, be more competent in designated tasks, interpersonal skills, communication skills, professional skills, help students finish their tasks and assessment within a shorter time frame and help pull the protégé up the organizational structure (Ferrández-Berrueco, Kekale, & Devins, 2016) and increase organizational commitment (Lapointe and Vandenberghe, 2017). Instructors' knowledge added with vast experience, will help in student employability and work skills (Meza et al, 2018).…”

“…Research found that systems-thinking, strategic, anticipatory, normative and interpersonal, effective mentor, able to spend time with, communicate or respond effectively to the student, ability to encourage, high level of professional skills, pedagogy skills, disciplined, supportive, motivating and ability to lead others, ability to convey constructive and thoughtful criticism in a patient and sensitive manner would help to foster student competencies and skills in the TVET field (Prunuske et al, 2019;Mohtady et al, 2019); Herlandy, 2019). It is advocated that TVET must be designed and monitored by someone who understands about the working process in the company and the things students need to learn during the internship (McGee, 2017;Moses, 2016).…”

“…Fisher (1994) contended that, effective instructors are knowledgeable and willing to share their knowledge, not only in their field, but also procedures and policies of the company and institutions involved. Instructors' skills and their ability to foster a good classroom environment, and mentors' accessibility, are factors that enable the learning and promote the well-being of student performance (García et al, 2020;Prunuske et al, 2019). The instructors must also have competencies as mentioned by Tuomikoski et al, 2020).…”