Naisarg Vanani, BSc; Devesh Kumar, BSc; Nana Danso, BSc; Mark Ehioghae, MSc; Pinky Jha, MD, MPH
WMJ. 2024;123(4):247.
Scholarship and mentorship play a vital role in academic medicine. However, previous literature has demonstrated that many medical students underrepresented in medicine (URM) often need additional support to engage in scholarly activities. To this end, the URM Mentorship Platform at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) is a peer and faculty mentoring program designed to foster collaborative networks, promote peer support, and facilitate interactions between students and faculty.
This platform, which started as a pilot program supported by Kern Institute in the 2020-2021 academic year with 2 peer mentors and 4 mentees, has now completed its third year. We have found this platform effective in increasing scholarly productivity.1 The program is an innovative platform to promote mentorship and scholarship among URM medical students at MCW with support from general internal medicine (GIM) faculty members who volunteer their time and expertise, along with student leads. With ongoing departmental faculty support, despite the end of funding in 2021, the efforts have continued to flourish.
Over the past 3 years, the program has seen substantial growth, with over 60 URM students and more than 15 faculty mentors participating, resulting in national and regional presentations, publication in peer-reviewed journals, acquisition of research opportunities and funding, and securing leadership roles at the regional and national levels. The student participants perceive benefits to this mentorship platform, most notably through increased scholarly productivity including case reports, quality improvement projects, letters to editors, and research projects.
Next steps for program improvement include accommodating a larger student body, facilitating additional formal engagement opportunities between students and faculty, diversifying mentee-mentor pairings across classes, and incorporating cases from various subspecialties. Through this, we hope to increase the formal mentorship and training opportunities that previously have been proven crucial to the process of forming new and adept student mentors out of previous mentees and perpetuate the cycle of peer support for future classes.2
Based on the effectiveness and the success of the mentorship platform, we anticipate the incorporation of this innovative structured mentorship platform into medical education curriculum to promote scholarship amongst the medical class.
REFERENCES
- Chandratre S, Marfowaa G, Abdel-Reheem AR, Jha P. Promoting mentorship and scholarship among underrepresented minority medical students. WMJ. 2022;121(3):171. PMID: 36301638.
- Ehioghae M, Danso N, Jha P. Lessons learned from a mentorship platform for underrepresented minority medical students. Acad Med. 2024;99(9)938-939. doi:10.1097/acm.0000000000005790