Perceptions of a faculty-trainee group mentorship program, the mentorship families program, in a residency training program: results from a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background In residency programs, the availability of faculty mentors for traditional dyadic mentorship relationships may be limited. Few frameworks exist for mentorship programs with a combined faculty and peer mentorship approach. The authors developed the Mentorship Families Program (MFP), a faculty-resident group mentorship program within a psychiatry residency program to meet the need for mentorship for a large cohort of residents. A cross-sectional survey was used to evaluate the impact of the MFP after its first implementation year. Methods Eleven mentorship families were created with 11 faculty members and 45 residents; each mentorship family consisted of one faculty member and 4–5 residents. A cross-sectional survey characterized the one-year perceived impact (2021–2022) of the MFP on resident and faculty mentoring experiences, with questions about the content, frequency, and quality of the MFP meetings and the strengths and areas of improvement for the MFP. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize quantitative feedback; directed content analysis was performed on open-ended feedback. Results Twenty-seven residents (60%) and 8 faculty members (73%) responded to the survey. 70% of mentorship families met at least once. The MFP helped foster resident-faculty connections and provided an environment to gain career advice. However, residents and faculty reported challenges with scheduling meetings and a lack of meeting structure as barriers to effective engagement with the MFP. Most residents recommended that other training programs implement a program like the MFP as it offered multidimensional opportunities for connections between residents and faculty. Conclusions A faculty-resident group mentorship program like the MFP can be implemented in residency training programs when traditional one-to-one faculty mentorship is often limited. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-024-06447-2.