Mentorship in Allied Health Science Education

Mentorship is an essential part of any education system. It provides students with guidance and support and helps them achieve their goals. Mentoring is a relationship between the mentor (the teacher) and the students, referred to as mentees. The primary role of this mentor-mentee system is to support students and serve as a bridge for knowledge and expertise exchange. A lot is being discussed about mentorship in medical education. The same is required for allied health science education as well.

There are different types of Mentorship or mentor-mentee systems. They can be followed individually or in combination. Some of the types are as follows:

1. One-to-one mentorship: Here, one teacher mentors one student at a time. This ensures individual attention. But this is time-consuming and becomes difficult given teacher's other responsibilities, such as teaching, laboratory work, institutional duties, research-related work, and other departmental work.

2. Group mentoring: This has greater benefits as it helps in sharing knowledge collectively and is feasible even in time and resource-constrained settings. However, personal issues and sensitive issues cannot be addressed.

3. Peer mentoring: This can be practiced by students and junior faculty through informal groups or one-to-one settings. Students can be paired, including seniors and juniors or peers from the same class. In allied health science education specifically, MSc students can serve as mentors for BSc students.

4. E-mentoring: Online mentoring has the advantage of flexibility. But this form of mentoring requires more commitment and motivation from both the mentor and the mentee.

5. Reverse mentoring: In this type of mentorship model, the junior students/ faculty with recent and updated knowledge share it with the senior students/ faculty. This is a relatively new concept emerging in the field of education.

6. Flash mentoring: This refers to short term mentoring for specific advice or a purpose to provide quick support and guidance.

The benefits of mentorship are many and include the following:

1. It helps mentees in their skills advancement, professional, and personal development.

2. It helps mentees with support and motivation in times of stress, pressure, and rigor, which at times are inevitable in the training period.

3. It helps with career guidance and research output.

4. It can help mentees in refining their teaching and clinical skills.

5. It helps in the development of soft skills, teamwork skills, communication skills, and leadership skills.

6. Mentors can benefit through the enhancement of their leadership, communication, and empathetic listening skills.

7. It gives mentors a sense of personal satisfaction and a better understanding of the students’ perspectives.

8. The institutional benefits include enhanced learning culture, better teamwork with improved outcomes, and better retention rates.

The mentorship system evolves through phases.

Phase 1

This is the preparatory phase. In this phase, the mentee defines their short-term and long-term goals. This phase focuses on growth.

 Phase 2

This is the phase for strengthening the mentor mentee bond and rapport building. This is the phase for ice-breaking.

Phase 3

This is the growth-enabling phase. In this phase, the mentor and mentee work together to plan and outline the path to progress and goals. Regular meetings to track progress, discuss the plan, and develop strategies to overcome challenges will help achieve the goals.

Phase 4

This is the phase of closure. The duo assesses the outcomes and celebrates the achievements. They identify areas of improvement.

Time is precious for both mentors and mentees. For effective conversations, the mentees can use these four Ps as a checklist.

1. Purpose: Mentees can prepare for the primary purpose of meeting their mentor, with the goals identified and any challenges they are facing in achieving those goals.

2. Preparation: The mentees can make the best of mentorship sessions by meeting their mentor with adequate preparation. They must know what they are looking for in the conversation. They can review the previous discussion and reflect on any lingering questions or particular issues they would like to revisit.

3. Participation: The mentee should ensure full participation from start to finish and keep aside all distractions. The mentee should practice active listening, presence, and gratitude.

4. Plan: The mentee, in discussion with the mentor, should prepare a plan to achieve the goals. Small steps towards the goal should be chalked out.

There is a compelling need to support diverse forms of mentorship in allied health science education. Institutions must create robust platforms by establishing formal mentorship programs that are meaningfully integrated into working hours and academic schedules. Mentorship should evolve into a sustained culture, with institutional leaders and policymakers playing a pivotal role in shaping and nurturing it. Faculty members, too, must be equipped to refine their mentoring abilities through well-designed faculty development initiatives. When these efforts come together, mentorship becomes not just a supportive practice but a transformative force that can redefine the professional journey of every mentee.

I thank the assistant editors, Dr Manjunath J and Dr Aravind, for reviewing the editorial, and the Heathminds team for their assistance.

Conflict of Interest

None