A prospective, randomised trial of different matching procedures for structured mentoring programmes in medical education

AbstractBackground: Spontaneous formation of mentoring relationships can be seen as the gold standard in mentoring. Unfortunately, it happens very infrequently. The purpose of structured mentoring programmes is to facilitate the formation of mentoring relationships. This remains a challenging task, especially for large institutions.Aims: We set out to investigate and compare three methods of matchmaking in the setting of our structured mentoring programme. In a prospective, randomised trial we compared personal matching (PM) by an experienced expert to two different electronic data processing (EDP)-supported matching procedures: “online algorithm” (OA) versus “online search” (OS).Methods: PM was performed after structured interviews of prospective proteges by one founder of our mentoring programme. The OA provides students with a choice of 10 potential mentors based on comparison of online profiles. OS lets students filter and search through all available mentor profiles. One hundred and ninty medical stu...