Medical Student Research Forum Posters

MiMentor is a student-led non-profit org whosemission is to provide innovative and inclusivementorship opportunities to inspire the nextgeneration of diverse healthcare leaders. This project aims to identify factors that contributeto leadership identity formation among students that have participated in MiMentor leadership positions.

Currently, there are less than 3.8% of physicians in faculty leadership positions in Academic Medicine that identify as Latino/Hispanic. Latinx are the largest single racial/ethnic group in California at 39% and are expected to constitute nearly half of Californians by 2060, there is an urgency to diversify our healthcare workforce toimprove the health and future of our state.

With health policy playing a larger role in the practice of medicine since the passage of the Affordable Care Act1, the need for medical students to have a basic understanding of health policy and its many components is urgent. Teaching medical students basic knowledge of health policy will properly prepare them to grow into the future leaders of the healthcare system.

Only 3 initiatives that address Health SystemsSciences (HSS) curricula and provide a case-study of sorts have been documented3,4,5. These include Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and Penn State College of Medicine.

Early exposure to medicine as a careeramong high school students in underservedcommunities is crucial for igniting passionand confidence in the next generation ofURM physicians to serve the diversecommunities of California. We hypothesize that after participating in this program, high school students will have increased awareness about the pathway to medicine and interest in pursuing a career in medicine.

Despite medical school admissions increasing, the numbers of prospective doctors are not enough to address the physician shortage, especially in rural areas. Many of these rural areas, such as California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV), are impacted by the lack of interest in primary care, aging practitioners, and various other factors; leading to higher rates of death, disability, and chronic disease when compared to urban populations. An important aspect of increasing medical students and physician training from rural areas is utilizing mentorship to foster a continuous supply of rural medical students who plan to serve their communities and residents who decide to remain in rural areas after training. Mentorship in medicine is not a new concept ,with many studies showing that mentorship results in benefits for both the mentee and the mentor. Junior physicians who received mentorship were found to have increased skill development, job satisfaction, and career development while mentors who partook in mentorship programs also reported higher job satisfaction and increase in retention at their current institutions. Of all the obstacles that physicians experienced in their pursuit of receiving mentorship, access to health professionals who could serve as potential mentors, was listed as the most common and difficult barrier to overcome; with factors such as race and gender not significantly affecting the level of satisfaction of those who received mentorship. Although there are previous studies on the impact of mentorship including: 1) retention/supplementation of rural physicians and 2) the importance of mentorship for residents and practicing physicians, studies on high value mentorship for premedical students are lacking. Furthermore, the literature fails to describe best practices on developing and sustaining mentoring relationships. Previously, scholars in the field have described the skills and characteristics of effective mentors. Nonetheless, the topic of mentorship in medicine still remains a contested topic as to the critical time periods for mentorship.

The Transforming Education and Community Health for Medical Students (TEACH-MS) was created 10 years ago with a specific aim towards preparing future physicians to practice primary care in urban underserved populations. Prior studies have explored curriculum changes within TEACH-MS.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical education has drastically changed to a remote format, with independent and e-learning becoming more valuable. While virtual learning of ultrasound has shown to be effective, there is scant literature regarding the efficacy of independent remote learning of the Extended Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma exam (E-FAST).

• Nationally, students in their pre-clerkship years have been abruptly transitioned to a mostly or entirely virtual educational experience. In this research study, we explored the impacts of this radical and sudden change on medical student well-being.

• How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect this already staggeringly high burn-out rate? To our knowledge, this question has not been thoroughly explored in the literature.

• We hypothesized that the sudden changes in medical education—including the loss of many timed and anticipated traditions, such as physical exam sessions, shadowing, and preceptorships— may potentially have negative effects on the mental health of medical students.

Mentorship has been shown to play a large part in career development, program retention and workplace satisfaction. Previous studies have shed light on the importance of improving the representation of women and racial minorities among faculty mentors across several medical specialties. This is especially true in the field of surgery, where female and minority representation has been historically low. Women, for example, represent only 15% of orthopaedic surgery residents while racial/ethnic minorities account for 3% to 10% of US orthopaedic surgeons. Recognizing these continued disparities, our study aimed to describe the implication and perception of need for same-sex and same-race mentorship and role models at evolving stages of a medical career, from medical student to resident to attending physician and to explore if these differences affect specific career choices within the field of medicine.

The Transforming Education and Community Health for Medical Students (TEACH-MS) was created in 2011 and designed to be a “four-year tailored M.D program at the UC Davis School of Medicine for students with a strong interest in primary care for the urban underserved. The program fosters thisinterest through “rewarding community-based experiences” and ultimately aims to “improve access to effective, culturally respectful and equitable health services for underserved communities.” As of February2021, 31 alumni have participated in the TEACH-MS. However, there has not yet been a holistic evaluation of the impact of the TEACH-MS curriculum in preparing future physicians to care for urban underserved communities. The urgency for this investigation is also compounded in the setting of major overarching curricular changes at UC Davis School ofMedicine. There are elements of the current TEACH-MS curriculum that have been previously studied in wider academic research. Most notably, the longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC), which has historically been the pillar of TEACH-MS students’ clinical years, is a structure that has been shown to cultivate patientcenteredness, enhance learning relationships, and promote increased exposure to common social and health issues. However, other elements utilized in the TEACH-MS program, such as didactics and community projects, have previously shown to have variable outcomes in cultivating physicians’ capacityfor social action. Given that it has been a decade since the formation of the TEACH-MS track program, we believe that it isa critical time to assess and reflect on the program’s curriculum and direction. We hope that this project will serve as an opportunity to identify the strengths of the TEACH-MS track program and provide recommendations for curricular refinements.

Background: Stressors, both inherent to training and stemming from the learning environment, have left many health professions students (HPS) struggling with high rates of burnout, depression, and academic difficulties. Besides being problematic for HPS themselves, these problems have also been shown to affect patient outcomes. In light of these findings, psychological resilience is gaining traction as a promising area of intervention to counter those problems in health professional schools. To address gaps in the literature, the authors propose a multidimensional model of the social determinants of resilience in HPS that includes drivers and their relationship to adverse mental health and academic outcomes.

Methods: The authors assessed the current literature for theories, interventions, and empirical evidence related to resilience and its associated variables in health professional students, distilling key drivers into a model inspired by the social determinants of health.

Results: The drivers of resilience were conceptualized into two main categories. Upstream drivers represent distal social determinants such as socioeconomic background, race/ethnicity, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Downstream drivers represent modifiable postmatriculation variables that may be associated with resilience. Downstream drivers can be further grouped into structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Upstream drivers impact resilience, mental health, and academic outcomes directly, with some of these effects mediated by intrapersonal downstream drivers, such as self-compassion and physical activity. Other upstream effects may be moderated by structural and interpersonal drivers, such as learning environment and sense of belonging.

Conclusion: Resilience in HPS is a complex construct influenced by determinants at all levels of the psychosocial spectrum. However, most resilience-based interventions have focused only on augmenting intrapersonal drivers (e.g., mindfulness). The current model offers a more extensive interpretation of resilience in HPS, taking student background and social environment into consideration. The authors plan to test this model, creating a guide for future interventional and empirical resilience investigations.