[Mentoring for medical students : Description and evaluation of a differentiated mentoring program at a medical school]

The Effectiveness of a Tailored Faculty Development Program for Undergraduate Mentoring and Its Impact on Mentor's Perceptions: A Mixed Methods Study

OBJECTIVE

"Anubandh" the existing mentorship program at our institute used to start with enthusiasm but lacked sustainability throughout the year. This study aimed to assess the need for designing and conducting a faculty development program (FDP) and evaluating its impact on effective mentoring.

METHODOLOGY

FDP was designed by assessing the perception of 50 teachers regarding undergraduate (UG) mentoring at a tertiary care teaching institute in central India, the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Center and Lata Mangeshkar Hospital, Nagpur, India. It was developed and conducted by focusing on the global overview, mentoring policies of the institute and rationale while implementing mentorship. The effectiveness of FDP was tested by a change in pretest-posttest scores for assessing their knowledge and reflections on undergraduate mentoring.

RESULTS

In the pre-FDP perceptions by mentors, the majority agreed that mentorship should be an integral part of the UG curriculum. Teachers felt that mentorship is an additional workload that needs to be given weightage in self-appraisal forms. A total of 81.2% of mentors emphasized on need for academic, social, and personal mentoring. After the FDP, there was a statistically significant improvement in the knowledge and attitude of mentors in all the assessed domains (χ2=2.648; df=6; p<0.05) like the need for UG mentoring in medical college and the role of faculties as a mentor. FDP sessions were appreciated by mentors for being motivating, interactive, and highly engaging with speakers having good oratory skills and using inspiring techniques with an overall rating of 9.2/10.

CONCLUSION

There was an overall positive attitude about mentoring but many expressed the need for training in mentorship. The FDP was highly effective in improving the knowledge and attitude of mentors for effective mentoring.

Between clinical practice, teaching and research - a project report on the development and implementation of a career mentoring curriculum for female clinician scientists

OBJECTIVES

Despite the high proportion of female medical students, the leading positions in almost all medical departments are still considerably less often held by female clinicians than by male. The aim of this project report is to introduce a career mentoring curriculum for female clinician scientists at Ruhr-University of Bochum in Germany.

METHODS

The career mentoring program was developed for young female clinician scientists who aim for a leading position in academic medicine. We describe and discuss herein its planning and implementation over two years (11/2020-11/2022) focusing on the needs of the target group.

RESULTS

The mentoring program is based on an agile twin-track strategy. It includes peer mentoring, content-related input and interdisciplinary three-to-one mentoring by the coordinators. Additionally, the mentees develop and conduct a scientific project to practice their acquired skills in a protected environment. The quality assurance system of the mentoring program includes a continuous evaluation of the mentees' satisfaction with the content and organisation of the program, whose results serve as the basis of the prompt adjustment of the latter. It also includes an evaluation of the sustainable impact of the program on the mentees' career development based on an adapted role matrix. The role matrix addresses the mentees to acquire the competencies required for them to become a successful clinician, scientist and academic teacher.

CONCLUSIONS

A 2-year innovative and unique career mentoring program for female clinician scientists was developed and already successfully launched. Making use of different mentoring strategies, the program has the potential to promote gender equality and encourage female physicians to pursue a career in academic medicine.

[Moral distress in medical students and young professionals: research desiderata in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic]

Hintergrund

Die COVID-19-Pandemie stellt Menschen, die in der medizinischen Versorgung arbeiten, vor besondere Herausforderungen. Ein Teil der Medizinstudierenden und ärztlichen Berufseinsteigenden, die in dieser Zeit in Einrichtungen der Gesundheitsversorgung ihre Mitarbeit beginnen, wird mit außergewöhnlichen moralischen Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Einige verfügen noch nicht über ausreichend Bewältigungsmöglichkeiten, um adäquat mit diesen Herausforderungen umzugehen. Dies kann zu sogenanntem moralischen Stress (MoS; Englisch: „moral distress“, MoD) führen. Dauerhafte oder intensive Belastung durch MoS kann gravierende Folgen haben. Geeignete Unterstützungsangebote haben das Potenzial, den Umgang mit MoS zu verbessern.

Ziel

Der Beitrag hat das Ziel, einen Überblick über den Stand der Forschung zu MoS von Medizinstudierenden und ärztlichen Berufseinsteigenden zu geben, um Lehrende mit Aus- und Weiterbildungsverantwortung und Ärzt*innen in Leitungspositionen für die Problematik zu sensibilisieren.

Hauptteil

In diesem Beitrag werden das wissenschaftliche Konzept MoS, bekannte Auslöser sowie Präventions- und Interventionsmöglichkeiten vorgestellt. Dazu wird das Thema Bezug nehmend auf die Veränderungen in der Patientenversorgung im Kontext der COVID-19-Pandemie analysiert und es werden Forschungsdesiderate aufgezeigt.

Fazit

Der Beitrag verdeutlicht die Notwendigkeit eines deutschsprachigen, interdisziplinären Diskurses über MoS bei Medizinstudierenden und Berufseinsteigenden.

The "practice track" - How can teaching content related to outpatient healthcare be integrated into medical studies? Learning objectives, conception and implementation of a specialized voluntary program

The "practice track" (PAT) at Goethe University Frankfurt provides students with the opportunity to focus on outpatient care during their medical studies. The aim of this article is to describe the objectives, conception and implementation of the program. At the Institute of General Practice, a new teaching concept has been developed in cooperation with the Dean's Office of the Faculty of Medicine at Goethe University and further partners. Medical students generally receive their training in highly specialized hospitals. However, the new concept will allow them to gain a practical insight into the outpatient care provided by physicians in private practice during their medical studies. Every year, 15 interested students will be able to participate in the longitudinal program, which includes internships, seminars and mentoring sessions. In the three current PAT cohorts, all 45 places have been taken up, and the first cohort has now completed the program. In addition to practical skills in the disciplines of family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and pediatrics, it has been possible to show students the full scope of ambulatory health care. However, legal limitations to the implementation of the program in registered medical practices have meant that some parts of it could only be carried out voluntarily. Against the background of the current and future situation in health care, it makes sense that registered physicians in private practice should teach medical students about outpatient care during their medical studies. In order to establish such programs and permit their complete integration into the medical curriculum, it is essential that the necessary changes are made to medical licensing regulations.

Perception of the study situation and mental burden during the COVID-19 pandemic among undergraduate medical students with and without mentoring

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic changes in medical education and might affect students' mental health and perception of study conditions. Mentoring may have mediating effects by enhancing social support. The University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) offers a voluntary general mentoring program (g-mentoring) for all interested students and a mentoring program for students with excellent course results and scientific interest (e-mentoring) We aimed to investigate the mental burden and views of their study situation during COVID-19 among students who did or did not participate in one of the formal mentoring programs. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey (May 2020) examining students' mental burden using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4), and assessing their perception of study conditions and digital teaching using self-developed items. Results: Of 1193 invited students, 543 (45.5%) completed the survey. 35% of those participated in the g-mentoring and 7% in the e-mentoring. 59% did not participate in any program. More e-mentees than g-mentees and nonparticipants reported clinically unproblematic levels of anxiety and depression symptoms. The majority of students (55%) was somewhat worried about the impact of the pandemic on their study situation. Regarding digital teaching students did not feel overburdened by the lack of a fixed schedule and structure, e-mentees even less than g-mentees and nonparticipants. Both g-mentees and nonparticipants were significantly more appreciative of the possible repeated use of the digital teaching materials than e-mentees (both groups M=5.7 vs. M=5.4 in e-mentees, p=.045). Conclusion: The results indicate that while students feel substantially burdened by the situation and the majority worries about the impact of the pandemic on their studies, they also seem to cope well with the digital course format. Study motivation during COVID-19 decreased among the majority of students with and without mentoring. These aspects may be important to address by medical schools interested in developing effective interventions to support students during a pandemic and continuous online teaching.

The Hamburg integrated medical degree program iMED

The integrated medical degree program (iMED) was established in winter semester 2012/2013 at the Faculty of Medicine of Universität Hamburg with the aim of improving medical education. The main features of the iMED medical degree program include the close integration of theoretical knowledge and practical skills, scientific orientation and the teaching of psychosocial and communication skills. All these features are commonly found in the modular compulsory core curriculum and elective courses ("2nd Tracks"): The compulsory core curriculum comprises 19 modules which are arranged thematically in seven module groups and cover three stages of a "learning spiral". By comprehensively coordinating the teaching content and the learning objectives of the participating theoretical and clinical subjects, theoretical content is taught on the basis of real patient's medical histories from the first stage of the learning spiral. The elective courses enable students to learn and apply scientific work in a structured curriculum according to their own interests. Relevant practical skills for students future professional routines are taught in the longitudinal training course "Clinical Examination Methods plus Communication" (KUMplusKOM), which runs through the entire curriculum up to the final practical year. Accompanying, extra-curricular projects such as crash courses in the natural sciences or using the iMED Textbook as an online learning platform increase the attractiveness of the iMED degree program. Results of the evaluation show that the introduction and the accompanying optimization of iMED were very successful.