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Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme

The mounting global cancer burden has generated an increasing demand for oncologists to join the workforce. Yet, students report limited oncology exposure in undergraduate medical curricula, while undergraduate oncology mentorships remain underutilised. We established an undergraduate oncology socie...

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Autores principales: Rallis, Kathrine S., Wozniak, Anna, Hui, Sara, Stammer, Adam, Cinar, Cigdem, Sun, Min, Fulton-Ward, Taylor, Clarke, Alison A., Papagrigoriadis, Savvas, Papalois, Apostolos, Sideris, Michail Ch.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688447/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33242159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01919-7
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author Rallis, Kathrine S.
Wozniak, Anna
Hui, Sara
Stammer, Adam
Cinar, Cigdem
Sun, Min
Fulton-Ward, Taylor
Clarke, Alison A.
Papagrigoriadis, Savvas
Papalois, Apostolos
Sideris, Michail Ch.
author_facet Rallis, Kathrine S.
Wozniak, Anna
Hui, Sara
Stammer, Adam
Cinar, Cigdem
Sun, Min
Fulton-Ward, Taylor
Clarke, Alison A.
Papagrigoriadis, Savvas
Papalois, Apostolos
Sideris, Michail Ch.
author_sort Rallis, Kathrine S.
collection PubMed
description The mounting global cancer burden has generated an increasing demand for oncologists to join the workforce. Yet, students report limited oncology exposure in undergraduate medical curricula, while undergraduate oncology mentorships remain underutilised. We established an undergraduate oncology society–led mentorship programme aimed at medical students across several UK universities to increase medical student oncology exposure. We electronically recruited and paired oncologist mentors and medical student mentees and distributed a dedicated questionnaire (pre- and post-mentorship) to compare mentees’ self-reported cancer specialty knowledge and oncology career motivation after undertaking a 6-week mentorship. We also determined students’ interest across specialties and subspecialties and measured mentor availability via percentage programme uptake. Statistical analysis included univariate inferential tests on SPSS software. Twentynine (23.4%) of 124 oncology specialists agreed to become mentors. The mentorship was completed by 30 students across three medical schools: 16 (53.3%) Barts, 10 (33.3%) Birmingham, and 4 (13.3%) King’s; 11 (36.7%) mentored by medical oncologists, 10 (33.3%) by clinical/radiation oncologists, and 9 (30%) by surgical oncologists. The mentorship generated a statically significant increase in students’ knowledge of the multidisciplinary team and all oncology-related specialties including academia/research but not interest towards a career in oncology. Undergraduate oncology mentoring is an effective educational, networking and motivational tool for medical students. Student societies are a valuable asset in cultivating medical student oncology interest by connecting students to faculty and increasing mentor accessibility. Further research should focus on developing an optimal mentorship structure and evaluating long-term outcomes of such educational initiatives. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13187-020-01919-7.
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spelling pubmed-76884472020-11-27 Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme Rallis, Kathrine S. Wozniak, Anna Hui, Sara Stammer, Adam Cinar, Cigdem Sun, Min Fulton-Ward, Taylor Clarke, Alison A. Papagrigoriadis, Savvas Papalois, Apostolos Sideris, Michail Ch. J Cancer Educ Article The mounting global cancer burden has generated an increasing demand for oncologists to join the workforce. Yet, students report limited oncology exposure in undergraduate medical curricula, while undergraduate oncology mentorships remain underutilised. We established an undergraduate oncology society–led mentorship programme aimed at medical students across several UK universities to increase medical student oncology exposure. We electronically recruited and paired oncologist mentors and medical student mentees and distributed a dedicated questionnaire (pre- and post-mentorship) to compare mentees’ self-reported cancer specialty knowledge and oncology career motivation after undertaking a 6-week mentorship. We also determined students’ interest across specialties and subspecialties and measured mentor availability via percentage programme uptake. Statistical analysis included univariate inferential tests on SPSS software. Twentynine (23.4%) of 124 oncology specialists agreed to become mentors. The mentorship was completed by 30 students across three medical schools: 16 (53.3%) Barts, 10 (33.3%) Birmingham, and 4 (13.3%) King’s; 11 (36.7%) mentored by medical oncologists, 10 (33.3%) by clinical/radiation oncologists, and 9 (30%) by surgical oncologists. The mentorship generated a statically significant increase in students’ knowledge of the multidisciplinary team and all oncology-related specialties including academia/research but not interest towards a career in oncology. Undergraduate oncology mentoring is an effective educational, networking and motivational tool for medical students. Student societies are a valuable asset in cultivating medical student oncology interest by connecting students to faculty and increasing mentor accessibility. Further research should focus on developing an optimal mentorship structure and evaluating long-term outcomes of such educational initiatives. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13187-020-01919-7. Springer US 2020-11-26 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC7688447/ /pubmed/33242159 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01919-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Rallis, Kathrine S.
Wozniak, Anna
Hui, Sara
Stammer, Adam
Cinar, Cigdem
Sun, Min
Fulton-Ward, Taylor
Clarke, Alison A.
Papagrigoriadis, Savvas
Papalois, Apostolos
Sideris, Michail Ch.
Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title_full Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title_fullStr Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title_full_unstemmed Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title_short Mentoring Medical Students Towards Oncology: Results from a Pilot Multi-institutional Mentorship Programme
title_sort mentoring medical students towards oncology: results from a pilot multi-institutional mentorship programme
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688447/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33242159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01919-7
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