Faculty Member’s Viewpoints about Mentorship in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, 2012

Background: Mentorship develops a personal relationship in which a more experienced and knowledgeable person helps a less experienced person. In this study we aimed to investigate mentorship status and its impact from viewpoint of clinical professors of Shiraz medical school. Methods: In this cross-sectional study 99 clinical professors of medicine at Shiraz medical school were investigated using simple random sampling. A valid and reliable questionnaire was used to collect the data .The clinical teacher were asked to tell their viewpoint about mentorship in ideal and real situation. A 5 point Likert scale was used for scoring of the questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 16 software, using t-test, paired t-test, and correlation. Results: Among the various features, from clinical teachers’ viewpoint "being provocative" was the most important feature of an ideal clinical Mentor (mean score: 4.67, SD: 0.55). Among the effects of mentorship on personality support of the students, in the ideal case, the effect of "accountability incrassation" had the highest mean score (4.91),However teachers believed that in real situation, "stress reduction" of students were the most effective role of mentorship in supporting the students (mean score: 2.76). At career supporting of the students, teachers believed in the ideal state “make motivation towards career" in students had the highest impact (mean score: 4.58). In the real status, "scientific development" and “professional promoting and career success," in student had the highest mean score (2.46).   Conclusions: Mentoring is  as an important process for the professional development of learners .In today’s situation the most time of mentors are spend of stress reduction of the students, However in ideal situation, positive mentors not only help to shape the professional development of our future physicians by improving the accountability incrassation, they also influence their career choices. To train teachers as a Mentor, we can use short-term courses and workshops and prepare some outlined such as learning and teaching process, adult learning principles, role clarity, setting educational goals, assessment and evaluation of learner and provide feedback