What makes mentors thrive? An exploratory study of their satisfaction in undergraduate medical education

Abstract Background Mentoring medical students with varied backgrounds and individual needs can be challenging. Mentors’ satisfaction is likely to be important for the quality and sustainability of mentorships, especially in programs where the mentor has responsibility for facilitating a group of mentees. However, little is known about what influences mentors’ satisfaction. The aim of this study was to measure mentors’ self-reported satisfaction with the mentoring experience and to explore associations between satisfaction and its putative factors. Methods An online survey was sent out to all physician mentors in each of the three mentorship programs (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, the University of Bergen, and McGill University, graduation years 2013–2020, n = 461). Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, dimension reduction, and linear regression. Results On a scale from 1 to 5, mean mentor satisfaction score at two Norwegian and one Canadian medical school was 4.55 (95% CI 4.47, 4.64). In a multilevel multivariate regression analysis, two predictors were significantly associated with mentors’ satisfaction: (1) the perception that students found the group meetings valuable (β = 0.186, 95% CI 0.021, 0.351, p = 0.027) and (2) mentors’ perceived rewards (β = 0.330, 95% CI 0.224, 0.437, p < 0.001). Perceived rewards included experiencing gratifying relationships with students, and mentors’ perception of self-development. Conclusions In this study, mentors appeared to be highly satisfied with their mentoring functions. Our findings suggest that mentors’ overall satisfaction is closely linked to their experiences of fulfilling mentor-student relationships and personal and professional development. Interestingly, and perhaps contrary to commonly held assumptions, we found no association between mentor satisfaction and financial compensation. Furthermore, satisfaction was not associated with the provision of pre-assigned topics for discussions for mentor group meetings. We propose that the mentors’ experienced psycho-social rewards, and their competence in establishing well-functioning group dynamics, should be areas of focus for faculty development.