Mentoring medical students during clinical courses: a way to enhance professional development

Mentoring is known to develop professional attributes and facilitate socialization into a profession. Only a few structured mentoring programmes for medical students have been reported in the literature.

The objective of this study was to investigate undergraduate medical students' experiences and perceptions of one-to-one mentoring and whether they felt that the mentorship promoted their personal and professional development.

Medical students (n = 118) during their third and fourth years of their studies were offered a personal mentor for 2 years and followed up via a questionnaire when the mentoring programme was completed. Statistical software was used to compute data. Open-ended questions were analyzed by content analysis.

Most of the respondents experienced that the mentoring programme had facilitated their professional and personal development. The role of the mentor was experienced as being more supportive than supplying knowledge. The students appreciated talking to a faculty not connected with their courses. The few barriers to a successful mentorship were mainly related to timing logistics and 'personal chemistry'.

One-to-one mentoring during clinical courses seems to enhance the medical student's professional and personal development. Future studies are needed to get a deeper understanding and knowledge about factors of importance for successful mentorship.