Faculty Perceptions of E-Mentoring Doctoral Dissertations: Challenges, Strategies, and Institutional Support

Faculty members who e-mentor dissertations in online doctoral programs, or remotely as a result of COVID-19 participated in an open-ended survey about strategies that helped them succeed, challenges they faced, and institutional support they would find helpful. Consistent communication, individualized support, and structure were found helpful for e-mentoring dissertations. Faculty overwhelmingly cited time, workload, and lack of institutional support as challenges, and stated that institutions could help e-mentors by providing support with the process, research resources, writing support, and time and incentives for e-mentoring. The results are discussed with recommendations for institutional support for dissertation e-mentoring.

Virtual Mentoring: A Novel Approach to Facilitate Medical Student Applications to General Surgery Residency.

OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly altered the landscape of medical education, particularly disrupting the residency application process and highlighting the need for structured mentorship programs. This prompted our institution to develop a virtual mentoring program to provide tailored, one-on-one mentoring to medical students applying to general surgery residency. The aim of this study was to examine general surgery applicant perception of a pilot virtual mentoring curriculum. DESIGN: The mentorship program included student-tailored mentoring and advising in 5 domains: resume editing, personal statement composition, requesting letters of recommendation, interview skills, and residency program ranking. Electronic surveys were administered following ERAS application submission to participating applicants. The surveys were distributed and collected via a REDCap database. RESULTS: Eighteen out of 19 participants completed the survey. Confidence in a competitive resume (p = 0.006), interview skills (p < 0.001), obtaining letters of recommendation (p = 0.002), personal statement drafting (p < 0.001), and ranking residency programs (p < 0.001) were all significantly improved following completion of the program. Overall utility of the curriculum and likelihood to participate again and recommend the program to others was rated a median 5/5 on the Likert scale (5 [IQR 4-5]). Confidence in the matching carried a premedian 66.5 (50-65) and a postmedian 84 (75-91) (p = 0.004). CONCLUSION: Following the completion of the virtual mentoring program, participants were found to be more confident in all 5 targeted domains. In addition, they were more confident in their overall ability to match. General Surgery applicants find tailored virtual mentoring programs to be a useful tool allowing for continued program development and expansion.

Virtual Mentoring: A Guide to Navigating a New Age in Mentorship.

Mentorship is a fundamental part of professional and personal growth. Over time, the fabric of mentorship has been transforming from typical one-on-one mentor-mentee relationship to other types including peer, group, speed, and virtual mentoring. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it caused major disruptions in many facets of life and career, including mentoring. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, live meetings were canceled, and social distancing measures were enacted at many institutions. Thus, the traditional set-up, with a face-to-face mentor and mentee interaction, was impossible. Many virtual platforms were utilized to navigate through these restrictions. In this review, we highlight challenges in mentorship during the COVID-19 pandemic and how we implemented different strategies to promote mentorship.

Stone disease in low- and middle-income countries: could augmented reality have a role in its management?

Urolithiasis is a global phenomenon. Cystolithiasis is common in parts of Africa due to low protein intake and dehydration from endemic diarrhoeal illnesses. Nephrolithiasis is less prevalent than in high-income countries, probably due to a variety of lifestyle issues, such as a more elemental diet, higher physical activity, and less obesity. Although renal stones are less common in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the social and economic impacts of nephrolithiasis are still considerable; many stones present late or with complications such as upper urinary tract obstruction or urosepsis. These may lead to the development of chronic kidney disease, or end-stage renal failure in a small proportion of cases, conditions for which there is very poor provision in most LMICs. Early treatment of nephrolithiasis by the least invasive method possible can, however, reduce the functional consequences of urinary stone disease. Although extracorporeal lithotripsy is uncommon, and endoscopic interventions for stone are not widespread in most of Africa, percutaneous nephrolithotomy and ureteroscopic renal surgery are viable techniques in those regional centres with infrastructure to support them. Longitudinal mentoring has been shown to be a key step in the adoption of these minimally invasive procedures by local surgeons, something that has been difficult during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic due to travel restriction. Augmented reality (AR) technology is an alternative means of providing remote mentoring, something that has been trialled by Urolink, the MediTech Trust and other global non-governmental organisations during this period. Our preliminary experience suggests that this is a viable technique for promulgating skills in LMICs where appropriate connectivity exists to support remote communication. AR may also have long-term promise for decreasing the reliance upon short-term surgical visits to consolidate competence, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of global surgical education.

Rethinking Educational Excellence with the Digital Transformation: A New Perspective on Developing Tech-driven Virtual Mentoring Platform for Unfinished Learning amid Covid-19

The world has been upended by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has posed significant impacts and challenges to the learning communities. Educational excellence for the new normal is calling for guiding students to "learn how to learn"and to develop their own individual talents and abilities along their educational journey. Through the preliminary baseline need assessments conducted in six universities, we observed that students are losing learning opportunities to a complete higher educational experience for their all-round development which they should have received in normal study years. Therefore, with the nature of students' educational experience radically changing-the demand for an improved virtual learning experience to attain educational excellence for this vulnerable population is magnified. The objectives of this case study are to 1) identify the learning obstacles that result in unfinished learning amid Covid-19, 2) explore the underlying learning mechanisms with online learning platforms to characterize students' anticipated level of educational excellence through the virtual learning environment, and 3) gain understanding about students' engagement, expectations, and satisfaction through students' feedbacks on the platform and evaluate potential impacts on educational effectiveness. This paper begins by summarizing and identifying limitations in the current higher education mentorship programs from both the mentors' and the mentees' perspectives. Then it introduces the innovative design and implementation of the Virtual Mentoring Platform built upon grounded theory, innovative technologies, evidence-based observations, and participants' feedbacks. Finally, it presented and discussed the preliminary results of the evaluation and implications of the case study. © 2021 IEEE.

Mentoring during Uncertain Times.

Scientific success is mainly supported by mentoring, which often occurs through face-to-face interactions. Changes to the research environment incurred by the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have necessitated mentorship adaptations. Here, we describe how mentors can broaden their mentorship to support trainee growth and provide reassurance about trainee development amid uncertain circumstances.

"GRASP" Module of Self-assessment with Virtual Mentoring for Uninterrupted Surgical Training During COVID-19 Pandemic.

Disruption in surgical training during the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many innovative "virtual" modules to address the loss of learning exposure during these difficult times. We suggest "GRASP" (Gain, Recognize, Analyze, Simulate, and Perform) module of self-assessment with virtual mentoring for uninterrupted surgical training. This idea merges the advantages of self-assessment and mentoring for the benefit of surgical trainees. Its embedded continuous close individualized mentoring can change the surgical training culture by initiating an assessment of surgical learning and skills right from the beginning of surgical training.