Mentoring 2.0, integrated in the Student Support Office (GAE), aims to be a follow-up, interaction and discussion project between a Specific Training Intern, a Common Year Intern, Specialist or Researcher and a set of students (maximum 3) of the clinical years (4th to 6th years) of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (FMUL), through the promotion of various actions, including Job Talks, discussion groups that provide a greater insight into certain specialties, or topics essential to the development of the medical internship, as well as clarify doubts on these themes.

This project emerged to perpetuate the mentoring initiative through the clinical years, and a timeline was created with methodology to be followed when designing and implementing it in the GAE.

In its first edition, the Project enrolled 48 mentors from various specialties or from the Common Year and 87 mentorees. Given that the mentor-to-mentoree ratio can range from 1 to 3, all mentorees were able to be included in the project despite pre-established selection criteria and the Organizing Committee considers it to be a successful pilot edition.

Regarding future perspectives, the Mentoring Project Partnership is under evaluation so that, depending on the survey analysis, the Project can be reformulated and adapted to the needs of students in the Academic Community. An assessment study of the impact of this project on the career development of the students involved, as well as their motivation to exceed and create new academic and professional goals, could also be implemented.

Listening to the mentorees,

“[...] the truth is that we understand very little, throughout the degree, about real life within a specialty [...]”
“[...] it enables the contact with a doctor who can tells us more about the future of medicine and with whom it is possible to clarify doubts.”
“[...] very inspiring for the future.”

And also to the mentors,

What are the positive aspects of the Project?
“Greater link between the faculty and the job market, greater clinical proximity, enabling the mentoree to choose a specialty with more information.”
“Sharing experiences, personal development, reflection on one’s path, possibility (and responsibility) to inspire a student who partly wants to have a path similar to ours.” 

their words sum it all up!

The Mentoring Partnership