Figure 1
Building Blocks of Global Health Mentorship: A Socio-Ecological Model.
Table 1
Key Findings Mapped to the Building Blocks of Global Health Mentorship Model.
| Mentorship Model Level | Key Results | Illustrative Quotations |
|---|---|---|
| Individual Level | ||
| Faculty Motivation | – Faculty gain personal and professional satisfaction from sharing experiences. – Faculty enjoy preparing future practitioners and leaders. – Students provide needed assistance with projects. | I think oftentimes, my mentees inspire me as well because they look at things from a different perspective, and oftentimes, their perspective is a lot more fresh … they’re also very enthusiastic … [Faculty IDI_14] |
| Trainee Motivation | – International experiences help build skills in international settings and provide opportunity for immersion in new cultures. | I think at the end of the day it shows that you’re really adaptable and you’re independent. If you go somewhere that is completely new to you and you work with a completely new group of people, if you manage people or do whatever, I think it always looks good to any employer, whether you’re here or you’re international or wherever, that you can rise to challenges, you can be independent; you have to be a little brave to be able to do that and stand on your own. [Student_IDI_3] |
| Interpersonal Level | ||
| Alignment of Expectations | – Increased academic costs have changed student expectations for mentorship. – Faculty seek students with previous work experience, cultural adaptability, and who are responsible. – Enumeration of expectations by all parties is important. – Changing timelines for projects are challenging to anticipate and require flexibility. | I think students oftentimes and/or trainees actually don’t know what they want. Or if they know, they don’t actually know how to verbalize it … and-and I think that’s actually the hardest battle, is really kind of knowing their expectations and being realistic with themselves, and being honest with their mentors. [Faculty_IDI_10] |
| Cultural Competency | – Student maturity and experience in low resource settings is a key consideration for faculty. – Cultural adaptation processes are important (e.g., learning the local language). – Faculty and students acknowledge unique learning and work environments in different countries. | There have been a couple of small challenges with some of the students being … whether unprepared or a little or maybe perhaps not mature enough to be travelling, and in a setting where it is not easy to get by if you don’t have a little bit of experience. That has taught me. That is why I have started to send people who are less experienced … with other people, this is true mostly for undergrads. [Faculty_IDI_12] |
| Structural Level | ||
| Financial | – Protected time and financial support for mentorship are frequently lacking but may be catalysts for success. – Financial support for student health and wellness (e.g., vaccinations) is needed. | At the school, a common complaint from faculty is that you’re usually not compensated for advising and sometimes not for teaching and things like that, so they feel that if that’s an objective for the school, then faculty should have that time—you know, half a day or one hour, one to two hours or something like that, that they could focus on mentoring and advising and investing into students and having that time set because everybody travels and you’ve got research proposals to write and it’s just survival. [Faculty_FGD_2] |
| Time | – Some institutional work environments better promote mentorship and collaboration. – Faculty face pressure in academic settings to balance their success with their mentees’. | And students get disillusioned when they’re given an advisor and the advisor is never there. They knock on their doors, they’re traveling, they don’t respond as quickly, and so we need education with both making faculty sensitive and making students sensitive to this kind of academic environment, which is different from other universities. [Faculty_FGD_2] |
| Mentoring Skills | – Faculty are not formally trained in mentorship. – Support groups may help foster skills in less-seasoned mentors and provide spaces for open discussion and documentation of issues. | Look, like, no one took me to mentorship school, you know? [Faculty IDI 13] We’ve tried to institute a sort of advisor support group, and I’ve had about four of them this past year, and it’s a mix. There are some very senior advisors and some junior people, and we just sort of talk about best practices and what works, and I’m trying to kind of create … a sort of standard or an approach to improving the advising. [Faculty_FGD_1] |