Mentors

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Several factors have been linked to the decline in medical student choice of a career in primary care (eg, gender, race, family income, student debt), yet understanding remains limited regarding the availability of curricular and co-curricular experiences for medical students within family medicine that may play a role, particularly one-on-one opportunities such as faculty mentoring and advising. Our study sought to collect baseline data on family medicine learning experiences during predoctoral training. METHODS An online 21-question survey was sent to family medicine departments at US allopathic medical schools between January and March 2012 (84.6% response rate) to capture institutional representation and experiences within family medicine. RESULTS Most institutions reported offering family medicine interest groups (98.1%), electives (97.1%), and clerkships (90.4%). Career advising as an elective course component was available at 53.8% of schools and as ...

Health care is a dynamic field challenged by development of new technology, response to consumer expectations, and industry consoli. dations and mergers. Effective leadership is essential for health care organizations to survive and thrive. Employers often rate leadership skills as the most important competence for employees. Today's global marketplace offers many opportunities for talented leaders. The challenge for organizations is to retain and develop leaders within their current workforce. This article will describe mentoring as a component of leadership development. Several studies from the literature — relating benefits of mentoring — will be summarized. Analysis of the value of mentoring and the outcomes realized within a single health care system will be discussed. Many organizations use a structured approach to mentoring for development of potential leaders and managers for the future as well as retention of employees. Mentoring can be used to motivate employees by pro...

Numerous articles describe barriers to nurses conducting research and achieving evidence-based practice as well as strategies for overcoming barriers. The Research Roundtable format is one such strategy. It is an interactive means for providing novice nurse researchers and nursing students with the skill sets required to drive application of existing evidence to nursing practice and conduct outcome studies to derive new evidence. The authors discuss their Research Roundtable series that addressed a number of barriers to research, research utilization, and evidence-based practice and how the series increased nurses knowledge and skills, demystified the research process, provided role models, demonstrated managerial and collegial support, and provided library, fiscal, and other resource support to complete staff projects. The details of the Research Roundtable series will guide others in replicating the process in their own organizations and academic communities.

To evaluate the effectiveness of mentorship programme with respect to emotional wellness of medical students. The cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey was carried out from March 2009 to February 2013 comprising first year medical students of five consecutive batches from two medical colleges. They were divided into two groups; Group A had non-mentored students from a medical college in Karachi, while Group B had mentored students of Bahria University Medical and Dental College, Karachi. Responses on aspects of emotional wellness was taken on a 4-point Likert scale; never, sometimes, mostly and always. Predictive Analysis Software version 18 was used for statistical analysis. Out of the 500 questionnaires distributed to each batch, 423(84.6%) were returned filled in Group A and 450(90%) in Groups B. Overall, 873(87.3%) responses were obtained. Group A had 275(65%) females whereas in Group B there were 275(61%) females. The mean age of the overall study population was 20±2 years...

Medical students often require high levels of specialised institutional and personal support to facilitate success. Contributory factors may include personality type, course pressures and financial hardship. Drawing from research literature and the authors' experience, 12 tips are listed under five subheadings: policy and systems; people and resources; students; delivering support; limits of support. The 12 tips provide guidance to organisations and individual providers that encourages implementation of good practice and helps them better visualise their role within the system. By following the tips, medical schools can make more effective provisions for the expected, diverse and sometimes specialist needs of their students. Schools must take a proactive, anticipatory approach to provide appropriately for their entire student body. This ensures that students receive the best quality support, are more likely to succeed and are adequately prepared for their medical careers.

Nursing is essentially a practice discipline, informed by a theoretical base. It is crucial that students have a rigorous preparation in both theoretical and practical elements during their pre-registration programme. The aim of educationalists is to produce students fit for purpose and practice, but concerns have been raised internationally regarding students competence at the point of registration. There is evidence that some practice based assessors experience difficulties in failing incompetent students. Assessment of practice is often judged on a pass/fail rather than a graded basis in a number of health professional programmes. It could be argued that pass or fail provides limited feedback to students concerning exactly how well or poorly they have performed. This paper will explore these issues through focusing on selected findings from a service evaluation of a practice assessment tool incorporating grading of practice of pre-registration nursing students from one university in the United Kingdom (UK). Using convenience sampling, a questionnaire survey was completed by 107 adult, mental health and child health nursing students (51% response) and 112 mentors (practice-based assessors) (86% response) from all nursing fields. Amongst other issues, the evaluation identified that whilst mentors valued the opportunity to grade practice and perceived that the tool enabled them to be more discerning in the allocation of pass grades, some lacked confidence in failing students. The findings are discussed in the context of the wider debate around clinical competence in new nurse registrants and it is concluded that whilst assessing 'borderline' students will always be a testing experience, grading systems may help the assessor to be more discriminatory.

In this essay I examine the racial achievement gap in American education in terms of an impaired psychosocial developmental process. I argue that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members’ early scholastic experience. I go on to suggest that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. In part, they may do so by adopting a "transcultural" pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self-concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap "from the bottom up"—one classroom at a time.