Mentoring future mentors in undergraduate medical education

Abstract

Background Efforts to support flagging mentoring programs facing shortages of experienced clinical mentors have had an unexpected and welcome effect. Supplementing traditional mentoring programs with peer-mentoring have not only addressed gaps in practice, structure, support and mentee oversight but have offered mentees charged with peer-mentoring duties the opportunity to take on mentoring roles under senior supervision. This study evaluates the experiences of peer-mentors within a local research mentoring program to better understand and advance this endeavor. Methods Semi-structured interviews and post-interview surveys based on recent reviews on mentoring were employed. Adapting the Systematic Evidence Based Approach, data was analysed using thematic and content analysis. Results were combined using the Jigsaw Perspective to ensure that key elements of the different mentoring stages were identified. Results The interviews and surveys revealed the following domains: Motivation, Initiation, Practicing, and Mentoring Environment. Conclusion These findings provide novel insight into a structured framework that may help guide the experiences, training, assessment, and oversight of peer-mentors beyond the auspices of our local program. These general observations will equip host organizations with the direction they need to take in designing and executing peer-mentoring training and assessment programs of their own. Whilst the stages of peer-mentoring need further evaluation and an effective means of assessment and support pivotal, we believe our findings suggest that peer-mentoring may not only help to address the shortfall in mentors but is an invaluable learning experience that prepares and instils key values, beliefs and principles in young would-be mentors.

A systematic scoping review of reflective writing in medical education

“…° Greater emphasis to be placed on role of assessors for them to provide adequate feedback and mentorship for users [ 50 , 138 ]…”

“…RW is also limited by poorly prepared physicians and misaligned expectations whilst a lack of privacy and a safe setting may precipitate physician anxiety at having their private thoughts shared [ 129 , 149 , 209 , 231 ]. RW is also compromised by a lack of faculty training [ 143 , 145 , 239 ], mentoring support [ 37 , 50 , 119 , 133 , 196 ] and personalised feedback [ 50 , 114 , 136 , 167 , 229 ] which may lead to self-censorship [ 37 , 114 , 136 , 149 , 160 , 183 ] and an unwillingness to address negative emotions arising from reflecting on difficult events [ 114 , 168 , 176 , 193 , 230 ], circumventing the reflective process [ 118 , 142 , 165 , 196 ] .…”

“…To synthesise a coherent narrative from the multiple accounts of reflective writing, we adopt Krishna’s Systematic Evidence-Based Approach (SEBA) [ 10 , 15 , 21 , 46 – 53 ]. A SEBA-guided Systematic Scoping Review (SSR in SEBA) [ 13 – 24 , 50 , 53 – 55 ] facilitates reproducible, accountable and transparent analysis of patterns, relationships and disagreements from multiple angles [ 56 ].…”

Understanding mentoring relationships between mentees, peer and senior mentors

“…The Tool design SEBA methodology designed around Krishna’s Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) was adopted to guide this two-staged study (Fig. 2 ) [ 1 , 4 , 8 , 19 , 21 , 29 – 32 , 36 , 38 – 42 ]. The Tool design SEBA methodology is detailed in Appendix 1 .…”

Role modelling in professional identity formation: a systematic scoping review

“…Krishna, Toh [ 8 ] and Radha Krishna, Renganathan [ 9 ]’s concepts of the mentoring umbrella offers a unique opportunity to study role modelling in a new light. The mentoring umbrella posits that role modelling is part of a spectrum of intertwined approaches including mentoring, supervision, coaching, tutoring and advising [ 10 , 11 ]. As is increasingly reported, role modelling in the mentoring umbrella is often applied in tandem with one or more of these approaches.…”