Clinical Competency Mentor Program

At its core, clinical mentoring aims to help individuals reach their full potential by identifying areas for improvement, crafting strategic action plans, and ensuring accountability. These mentors play a crucial role in helping students recognize areas for enhancing their clinical competencies. They assist in setting specific, mutually agreed goals aimed at driving improvements in performance. Furthermore, the mentoring process plays a pivotal role in shaping the professional identity of medical students, fostering their integration into the broader physician community.

To fulfill these objectives, the Office of Curricular Affairs has established 15 specialized clinical competency coaching microsystems per class. Each system comprises a Clinical Competency Mentor (CCM) who guides a group of eight medical students. The focus of these microsystems is to stimulate the development of clinical skills and facilitate continuous learning among students, preparing them for the demands of medical practice. The longitudinal nature of these relationships enables the CCMs to provide ongoing guidance throughout the students' journey of becoming a physician.

The responsibilities of CCMs are spread across the three phases of the curriculum. They are charged with advancing learning and academic progress, fostering the growth of physician skills among students, providing iterative feedback through direct observation, and encouraging continuous improvement.

CCMs conduct individual meetings with students and engage in group activities within their coaching microsystem at specified intervals throughout the curriculum. These activities include individual progress and planning meetings, goal setting based on CCM feedback, iterative observation and feedback in various clinical settings, and continuous quality improvement sessions.

During the Pre-Clerkship phase, CCMs serve as the primary facilitators of the Clinical Skills course, interacting with their students weekly over the initial 16 months of the curriculum. This enables them to directly observe the students as they develop their clinical skills and teach inter-professional teamwork and professional identity formation.

In the Clerkship phase, CCMs observe the application of their students' clinical skills in various training sites. Feedback from these observations provides invaluable insight for students. However, to maintain trust and adhere to the coaching role's student-centered approach, CCMs do not contribute to the summative assessments of their assigned students.

As students enter the Integration and Transitions phase, CCMs continue to guide them through scheduled individual progress and planning meetings, ensuring their continued progression towards clinical competence.

In conclusion, the role of CCMs and the implementation of clinical coaching microsystems offer a systematic and consistent framework. This facilitates the development of clinical competence, professional growth, and the formation of professional identity among medical students as they progress through their medical education.

Dr. Christopher Strother oversees the CCM Program.