President’s Message
Mentoring Benefits Medical Students and Physicians
Alan W. Sidel, M.D.
In July, I mentored an aspiring physician, a junior at the Indiana University School of Medicine, during her one-month required rotation of family medicine. She impressed me as someone who will make a good physician — good diagnostic and people skills with a strong understanding of medicine. She was not the first medical student that I’ve mentored, and she won’t be the last. If you’re not serving as a mentor, I strongly encourage you to do so.
Being a mentor doesn’t take much time. Studies have shown that the presence of a medical student in a physician’s office lengthens an eight hour day by only twenty minutes.
The process will seem familiar to most participating physicians. I follow the example from my own student days in the IU School of Medicine when I followed and learned from Drs. Ken Gray and Loren Martin of Indianapolis as they practiced medicine. Working with them was really quite a neat experience for me, going from the medical school classroom to seeing — and touching — actual patients! I remember talking to my friends about how thrilling it was to turn my textbook knowledge into practical use and to see how doctors determine a treatment plan.
Just as they did, I follow a simple and effective five-step process: Get a commitment (diagnosis), probe for supporting evidence, teach general rules about diagnosis, tell the student what they did right, and correct their mistakes.
During the first week, the student is primarily an observer. During the following weeks, the student’s role becomes more hands-on, and entails doing patient examinations and evaluations, followed by discussing the case with the mentoring physician.
The students that I’ve worked with seem to enjoy the mentoring process because they too get to see actual patients and put their medical knowledge to use. The physician mentors I know enjoy contributing to the students’ education and helping them to become better doctors. Working with students keeps the practicing physicians tuned in to current medical literature and abreast of current information, a necessity because the students are so bright.
The mentoring process is more formalized than when many of us were medical students. Back in those days, we had to set up our own sessions for school vacation periods. Now medical school staff coordinates those connections between students and physicians, making the process much easier.
Paul Blusys, M.D., who coordinates the IU School of Medicine Family Practice students in the Fort Wayne area, foresees a rising demand for local preceptors and mentors. Although juniors are required to participate, sophomores and seniors may also choose to participate. Twenty students a year will entail an additional 240 preceptor months each year.
“In my experience the main reasons physicians precept students are because they find it fun and enjoyable, want to give to someone else, and to generate CME credits for teaching. Those who decline to precept students cite lack of time, are not sure they have anything to give, or have certain practice quotas and productivity requirements they have to meet, “Dr. Blusys said.
With a shortage of family practice, internal medicine, and pediatric physicians looming, mentoring may help recruit more medical students to these fields. According to research in the June 1995 issue of Family Medicine, “Formal mentoring programs have been suggested as one strategy to increase student interest in primary care.”
If you’ve never been a mentor to a medical student, please consider it. There are lots of current opportunities, and there will be even more in the future.
