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Abstract

Background: Mentorship plays a formative role in undergraduate medical education (UME) From shaping professional outcomes to developing longitudinal personal relationships, various forms of mentorship can influence student progress meaningfully, particularly for students from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds. Though faculty-student mentorship has been readily investigated, limited knowledge exists regarding peer-peer mentorship structures, particularly within UME in the American medical education model. This scoping review sought to investigate existing peer-peer mentorship models, as well as report on the need for further mentorship within this realm in UME.

Methods: This scoping review employed Arksey and O’Malley’s framework. We conducted a systematic and comprehensive search across PubMed, MEDLINE, and Google Scholar. Studies included in the review described mentorship in medical education among medical students and were published between 2014-2024. Relevant data were extracted and analyzed from available studies to report on general trends and implications for the future.

Results: Fifty-four studies were independently screened by two reviewers. Ten studies were ultimately determined to preliminarily satisfy inclusion and exclusion criteria. The majority of publications (n=7) specifically evaluated a mentorship program, while the remaining discussed mentorship in undergraduate medical education more broadly and/or from a pedagogical perspective (n=3). N=1,711 participants were considered across the 10 included studies. Across evaluated studies, the majority demonstrated high professional value, as well as positive non-professional outcomes, with implementation of peer-peer mentoring programs, with limited if any negative feedback. Across 10 studies, peer-peer mentoring models demonstrated increased professional readiness, academic confidence, and overall non-professional/professional outcomes for both mentors and mentees. Thus, peer-peer mentoring plays a key role in undergraduate medical education, and there is a need for further use of such mentoring models across medical education programs.

Conclusion: Peer-peer mentoring models show great promise for increasing student engagement for both mentors and mentees, including positive and improved professional and non-professional mentorship outcomes.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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