Stepping into a medical college can be stressful to many students. A robust Student Mentorship Program (SMP) can help students overcome several academic and personal challenges. A SMP has been functioning in our institution (VMKVMC & H, Salem) for the past 11 years. A need was felt to study the impact and effectiveness of the SMP in the academic year 2018-19, in order to ensure that the program would benefit the students and faculty maximally.

Objectives:

The objectives of the study were to:

1. Sensitize faculty on role of mentors.

2. Introduce a structured mentorship program.

3. Obtain faculty perception of the SMP through a structured & validated mentor evaluation form.

4. Analyse the data obtained from the mentor evaluation form.

Materials & Methods:

A workshop was conducted for faculty of preclinical departments to sensitize them on the role of mentors and usefulness of SMP. 16 faculty members from preclinical departments were enrolled as mentors for first year M.B.B.S students (n=100), 4 faculty mentors were entrusted with 07 student mentees & 12 faculty mentors with 06 student mentees each. A scheduled meeting time every month for an entire academic year was arranged between the mentors and mentees. At the end of the academic year, the perception of faculty was obtained using a structured and validated mentor evaluation form.

Results:

35% of faculty rated the SMP as excellent & 38% as very good; 31% of faculty felt they needed additional training to be effective mentors; 77 % of faculty felt their responsibilities as mentors was clearly defined; and 73 % of faculty described their relationship with their mentees as being very good. The faculty expressed their satisfaction of conducting SMP as it helped them to develop counseling skills. It helped them to understand the do & don'ts of mentorship. It also helped them to understand the responsibilities of a mentor.

The challenges faced were with respect to inadequate time spent at each session and absence of few mentees at all the sessions.

Conclusion :

The study has been conducted for benchmarking the perception of faculty mentors on the SMP. A longitudinal data analysis will be performed over the subsequent academic years to obtain statistically significant results. The study will be extended to analyse students' perception of the SMP. Appropriate modifications would then be made to the existing SMP in order to rectify perceived deficiencies in the program.