Background: Students entering into medical education encounter many difficulties right from adjustment to the new environment, peer pressure, and home sickness to difficulty in coping with their studies. A helping hand in the form of a mentor can ease the situation with confidence. A peer mentor is also a student of the same profession of higher phase who would be of help to the juniors to overcome difficult situations.
Aim and Objective: Our study was done to assess the opinion of the students on peer mentoring and to improve the effectiveness of the mentoring program.
Materials and Methods: It is a cross-sectional study. It was done on 150 MBBS students which included both males and females. It included students of all the years studying in MBBS at Sri Siddhartha Medical College and Sri Siddhartha Institute of Medical sciences, T-Begur. About 107 students were willing to participate in the study. A questionnaire was provided to them which was answered and returned back. Data were summated and descriptive statistics were applied. Responses of the students to the questionnaire were represented as percentages.
Results: About 56% of the students knew what peer mentoring is. Almost all the students were of the opinion that peer mentoring will provide positive lifestyle changes. About 79.43% of students suggested that peer mentoring would prevent ragging. Finally, there was a positive notion from the students side to add on peer mentoring to the mentoring program.
Conclusion: Students entering into the medical curriculum are burdened with voluminous subjects, stressed with peer pressure, and depressed with homesickness. In our study, we could assess the need for the mentoring program and conclude that a peer mentor can help them to resolve the lacunae of the mentor-mentee relationship and help them handle the situation better.
Key words: Medical Curriculum; Mentoring Program; Peer Mentoring; Mentor-mentee Relationship
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