Mentoring Needs among the Phase 1 Medical Students in the Universiti Sains Malaysia

Mentoring programme is an important element for personal and professional development of medical students. In specific, the most important element is mentors must focus on the real issues that the students face during the mentoring process. This study aimed at comparing the prevalence of the mentoring needs and examining the association between characteristics of demography and mentoring needs among the phase 1 medical students from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). A cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2017 among the first- and second-year medical students in the School of Medical Sciences, USM. The USM mentoring inventory (USM-MT-i) questionnaire was employed to collect the data. This self-administered questionnaire consists of two domains with 17 items: communication and self-leadership skills (9 items) and learning skill (8 items). Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for each domain were 0.915 and 0.904, respectively. The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.895. The prevalence of mentoring needs was determined and its association with the year of study was assessed. This study included 208 of medical students comprised 123 and 85 of the first-year and the second-year, respectively. The prevalence of communication and self-leadership skills mentoring needs among the first-year medical students was 26.8% (95% CI: 22.9%, 30.6%) and 18.8% (95% CI: 14.8%, 23.0%) among the second-year medical students. The prevalence of learning skill mentoring need was 77.2% (95% CI: 73.6%, 81.0%) among the first-year and 63.5% (95% CI: 58.5%, 68.6%) among the second-year medical students. There was a significant association between year of study and learning skill mentoring need (χ2 (1) = 4.65, P = 0.031). None of the demographic characteristics (gender, ethnic, entry qualification, origin and scholarship) was significantly associated with the mentoring needs. The data of mentoring needs among the phase 1 of medical training is crucial to provide them an effective mentoring programme.