Does Academic Performance Affect the Perceived Value of Mentorship, and Mentor's Influence on Student's Satisfaction? A Cross Sectional Study

BACKGROUND An effective mentorship can greatly help medical students in achieving personal and professional success, and satisfaction. Mentorship efforts are therefore gaining increasing importance in medical education. It is important to make a realistic appraisal of factors that can affect the outcome of mentorship exercise, so that specific improvement in mentorship strategy can be made. Academic performance correlates with students' ability to handle learning stress, and their professional and personal competence. This study aims at identifying the perceived value of mentorship in medical students. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was conducted among graduate medical students at the College of Medicine, Majmaah University, in October 2019. The mentees completed an anonymous questionnaire about the perceived quality of the mentorship. Academic performance was evaluated from Garde Point Average (GPA), whether the student has repeated one or more years in the college, and the number of academic papers published by the student. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine significant differences among groups. Two-tailed p-value was used to evaluate the statistical significance. RESULTS The questionnaire was sent to 337 mentees. The response rate was 67.7 % and the average age of mentees was 21.9 +/- 1.4 years. 276 (98 %) mentees were unmarried and 171 (61 %) were men. 78 (27.7 %) mentees had a GPA of 4.5 - 5. 76 (27.0 %) mentees repeated one or more years in the college. 214 (75.9 %) mentees did not have any publication. More men than women had one or more published papers (men 29.2 % vs women 15.2 % , p = 0.04), The median score of Mentorship Relationship Structure (MRS) for the GPA 2 - 2.5 was 8 (IQR = 15) and it increased to 25 (IQR = 12.2) in the group with GPA 4.5 - 5 (p = 0.004). On MRS, there was no effect of repeating a year in college or the number of papers published (both, p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The mentees with extremely low and high GPA can have different perceived quality of the mentorship. The mentorship exercise should be customized to address the specific needs and motivational status of mentees with low and high GPA.