Association for Surgical EducationSurgical residents as medical student mentors
Section snippets
Methods
During the academic year of 2004–2005, 117 medical students completed their third-year surgery clerkships at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY. On completion of the rotation, the students were asked to complete an anonymous written survey regarding their interest in a surgical career and their ability to identify a surgical mentor during the clerkship (Fig. 1). These surveys were collected prospectively as each rotation of students completed their experience with the surgery
Results
A total of 117 students finished the surgical clerkship during the study period. A total of 107 (91%) of the students completed the survey. There were 45 men (42%) and 62 women (58%). Twenty-seven percent of students were interested in surgery or a surgical subspecialty. Twenty-one percent were interested in medicine or a medical subspecialty. Twenty-four percent were interested in other specialties and 28% were undecided.
Forty students (37%) had a positive view of surgery as a specialty before
Comments
The surgery clerkship positively influenced students’ perceptions of surgical careers. Although the reasons likely are multifactorial, we found that identifying appropriate mentors likely had a significant impact. Role models have been noted to be key in student recruitment into surgery and recent editorials have called for increased attention to surgical mentoring [4], [5], [6], [9]. Faculty traditionally have been identified as the main players in this role. However, we found that residents
Conclusions
Role models are crucial in bolstering medical students’ interest in surgical careers. As shown in this study, students identify residents with many of the qualities essential to an outstanding mentor. Efforts should be made to foster the student-resident mentoring relationship as an adjunct to the efforts made by attending surgeons.
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