Investigating Prior Mentoring Experiences of Medical Students and Its Perceived Benefits

Successful mentoring relationships allow mentees to gain the confidence and knowledge they need to reach their goals, but students from populations generally underrepresented in science and health fields have been shown to receive less mentorship than their well-represented peers. In highly competitive processes, like medical school admissions, mentoring may be particularly valuable. We investigated the prior mentoring experiences of medical students and whether their perceptions of mentoring differed based on their mentoring goals or demographics (race/ethnicity, gender identity, household income, or parental highest level of education) through surveys and interviews of medical students from three different institutions. These medical students had widely participated in mentoring, though student race and household income impacted their access to medical professionals to serve as informal mentors. Medical students shared the same gender identity as their mentor more often than would be expected under the null hypothesis. Students reported having both career and psychosocial goals for mentoring, and there was a positive association between the strength of the mentees’ goals for mentoring and the number of formal mentors the mentees had. These respondents viewed mentoring as having provided them with both career and psychosocial benefits. Mentoring programs for aspiring medical students may benefit from focusing on both career and psychosocial functions to maximize the benefits of mentoring for students from diverse backgrounds.