Assessment of need for mentorship in postgraduate medical students

Mentoring has been recognized as an essential component of medical education in order to harness one’s potential to the fullest. Most medical colleges in India including ours have acknowledged this fact and started mentorship programs for their undergraduate students, but the same is lacking when it comes to postgraduate students. We sought to assess whether the postgraduate trainees at our institute felt the need for a mentorship program directed at them. A semi-structured proforma was distributed randomly to 50 postgraduate students of our institute and data was collected anonymously. 92% students returned the filled proforma, 74% felt the need to start a mentorship program for postgraduate students, and 24% had been in a mentorship program in their undergraduate training. 10 out of these 11 felt the need to have a mentor during their postgraduate training as well. This study would help us plan the same with inputs about the structure of the program received through the semi-structured proforma. Keywords : Mentorship, Mentor, Postgraduate students.