Dear Sir
I read with great interest an article published in your journal titled “Long-term follow-up of a facilitated peer mentoring program” (Mayer et al. Citation2014). The article demonstrated the importance of the availability of a structured mentoring programme to augment academic productivity among clinicians. As an undergraduate medical student, this conclusion suggests to me a valuable strategy to engage medical students in academic research from an early stage in their careers.
Evidence-Based Medicine is the trending paradigm in clinical medicine. Awareness of current research trends is now a compulsory quality in medical practitioners that enables them to provide optimal patient care. Perhaps in blunter terms, research achievements also demonstrate interest in a specialty field and are the mandatory ingredient to success to gain competitive entries into post-graduate training programmes.
However, frustratingly, studies have continued to show various barriers faced by undergraduate students in research. These include a lack of encouragement from seniors and teaching on writing skills (Griffin & Hindocha Citation2011).
With the success demonstrated at a post-graduate level in this study, it would be most interesting to pilot a similar peer mentoring programme at an undergraduate level, a potential solution to these barriers. One can argue that Student Selected Components, which are established components in the curriculum of most medical schools, already represent ample opportunities for undergraduates to work as a mini “research group”. However, members often have different expectations and levels of motivation. With a non-mandatory programme set up in a semi-official way, for example through student research societies, this gathers a group of enthusiastic individuals who share the common goal of achieving publication productivity. This is vital because undertaking projects represent significant extra-curricular time commitments.
It is important to note that the success of such student-initiated programme is still reliant on the support from the medical school, especially in recruiting senior faculty members to serve as mentors. Rather than adopting a facilitating role as described in the study by Mayer et al., the mentors working with undergraduate students should also bear responsibilities of educating students in paper writing skills and research methodology; skills that will continue to be invaluable in post-graduate careers.
Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest.
References
- Griffin MF, Hindocha S. 2011. Publication practices of medical students at British medical schools: Experience, attitudes and barriers to publish. Med Teach 33(1):e1–e8
- Mayer AP, Blair JE, Ko MG, Patel SI, Files JA. 2014. Long-term follow-up of a facilitated peer mentoring program. Med Teach 36(3):260–266