Medical Student Mentorship in the COVID-19 Era.

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic led to a reduction of in-person, guided mentorship due to social distancing and an emphasis on virtual meetings. The effect of these changes on medical students' experiences and specialty choice has yet to be studied in a large-scale manner.

Objective: To determine the perspective of third- and fourth-year medical students regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mentorship.

Design: The authors distributed a modified Likert scale questionnaire (score: 1-10) to assess responses.

Participants: Third- and fourth-year medical students at two large US allopathic medical schools.

Main Measures: Responses to each survey item were analyzed to characterize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mentorship relationships in medical school. A score of 1-5 was considered "disagree" and a score of 6-10 was considered "agree."

Key Results: A total of 144 responses were collected with a response rate of 16.2%. Overall, 80.6% ( = 116) of respondents agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on their medical school experience. Nearly half (41.0%,  = 59) expressed concern over the lack of mentorship opportunities, and 66.0% ( = 95) reported that the pandemic has made it more difficult to form or maintain connections with their mentors. Importantly, 43.6% ( = 61) of respondents reported that having close mentoring relationships reduced the impact of the pandemic on their medical training. While many respondents (79.9%,  = 114) did not change career plans due to the pandemic, most students are concerned about evaluating prospective residency programs (88.9%,  = 128). Notably, M3s have much lower confidence than M4s in their ability to choose a specialty (5.9 vs. 8.2,  = 6.43e - 08).

Conclusions: This investigation illustrates the concerns that medical students have regarding access to mentorship opportunities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope that these findings encourage medical schools to evaluate and expand their current mentorship programs.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01838-4.