Mentoring & support practices for final year medical students during a pandemic – ‘The covid doctors’

Background: Transition from final-year medical student to newly graduated doctor is challenging with evidence of associated increased patient mortality and medical errors. Previous work suggests tackling preparedness alone does not ‘solve’ this transition. The current focus on mentoring and support provision during this period and is an under-researched area. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique disruptive critical incident in which to examine mentoring and support practices, exposing strengths and weaknesses. The perspectives of this cohort and their implications remains an under-researched area. Methods: Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine graduate-entry final-year medical students. An inductive latent phenomenological approach explored individual experiences of mentoring and support practices during final-year and transition to professional practice. Results: Three major themes emerged: 1) Mentoring & Support; 2) Clinical Exposure; 3) Graduation & Transition. A journey metaphor was used to aid the description of participants’ lived experience of mentoring and support practices during their final year. Final year medical students (FYMs) felt under-supported and found practices inadequate. Reduced clinical exposure yielded unpreparedness and regression, potentially impacting future careers. Positive experiences were variable and unstructured. ‘The COVID Doctors’, subtheme provided rich insights into shared narratives and identities amongst participants. Conclusions: This study provides qualitative evidence for perceived inadequate mentoring and support provision for final year medical students at transition during a critical incident (the COVID-19 pandemic). Several themes using the metaphor of a journey explore the lived experience of this unique cohort determining their perceptions on the delivery of their medical education and their identity as ‘covid doctors’. There are several implications for this study in a post-pandemic era and for pandemic-preparedness, both rapidly growing areas of research in medical education. Recommendations include updating contingency plans, balancing clinical exposure with patient safety issues, and providing support to ‘bottom-up’ mentoring practices.