Satyanveshi: A New Age Mentorship Program in Medical School

Satyanveshi: A New Age Mentorship Program in Medical School

Bhavya R Maroo
Gurukool MAMC, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India

Need of an innovation: Medical training has its own unique challenges that advocate the need of an apprentice model and active mentorship for improved learning experience. However, unlike other disciplines, mentorship is in the nascent stages at most medical schools in India.

Novelty: Through Satyanveshi, a Gurukool initiative, we aimed to introduce a systematic mentorship program encapsulating faculty-student and peer mentoring in a structured yet informal manner.

Innovation: Satyanveshi program involved the voluntary participation of mentors and mentees from Maulana Azad Medical College. The mentees indicated their needs, and mentors shared their respective interests, abilities, and roles where they would mentor. A dyad of mentor-mentee was then established through mutual consensus and ice-breaking sessions were held. The program was not restricted to academics and instead incorporated extra-curricular activities, personality development, research, sports, technology, mental health, and sociocultural adjustments. A monitoring team comprising of faculty and student representatives supervised the matching process and ensured the smooth execution of the program. The first cycle matched 43 Mentees and 34 Mentors across a range of fields. Feedback from the involved mentors and mentees indicated high satisfaction scores and appreciation for the project. Through this project, we aim to benefit mentees by making them more comfortably placed on campus, attending to their hardships, guiding them towards best clinical and research practices, and making them into a wholesome professional medical graduate. We also aim to provide mentors with a rewarding experience through instilling a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment and enhancing their own personal and professional development.