Mentoring für Medizinstudierende im großen Stil – Ziele, Design und Realisierung

Abstract

In this paper, the design and implementation of an institutional mentoring program for undergraduate medical students at the Medical University of Vienna are presented. Faculty members act as senior mentors in a small group setting enabling also peer mentoring (73.6% of mentees reporting a direct benefit from their co-mentees). Program acceptance by mentees and mentors is very high (71.7% of the mentees and 77.1% of the mentors giving the highest out of four rating categories). The adequacy of this program was studied by analyzing the topics discussed in the mentoring groups: the most frequently covered aspects are diploma thesis, clinical clerkship, studying abroad and career planning. Additionally, sex-specific distributions of mentor recruitment and selection as well as participation by students were documented (e.g., female proportion of 29.9% and 53.2% of mentors and mentees, respectively). Both feedback and content analysis demonstrate the success of this large-scale project.