Possibilities and limits of a student-led, near-peer mentoring initiative for first-year dental students

Dental students face many challenges throughout their education. Peer mentoring programs can support students and help manage pressures associated with dental school, although few studies have researched student-led peer mentoring. The aim of this study was to explore the possibilities and limits of student-led, near-peer mentoring in a dental program.

We conducted a qualitative study on the tooth bud program (TBP), a student-led, near-peer mentoring program at a research-intensive university. Eligible study participants were Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) students who participated in the TBP as a first-year mentee and/or second-year mentor between 2017 and 2020. Twenty-two participants and one program founder were interviewed about their experiences and involvement in peer mentoring. A thematic analysis was employed, and Brownlie and Anderson's sociology of kindness provided a theoretical analytical framework.

Three themes represented participant perspectives of the TBP: Firstly, students desired to build a community but had to manage inherent hierarchies. Secondly, participants appreciated that the TBP was a student-led initiative, but its unstructured and informal nature brought challenges. Thirdly, mentoring experiences and the ways mentors and mentees navigated their pairings were identified.

Mentoring was founded in the shared experience of studying dentistry and allowed mentor-mentee pairs to establish kinship and progress relationships. Kindness acts as an infrastructure to guide interactions; however, underdeveloped kinship may hinder mentoring. Thus, the peer mentoring program researched provides value to mentees and mentors and allows participants to benefit from becoming part of a student-led, professional community.