Career Advising/Mentoring

M1 Year

The Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum (IGC) Physician Mentor Program is one of three components of the overall IGC Program at NSU-COM. The premise of the Physician Mentor Program is that exposure to professional role models is a significant determinant of medical students’ career choices. The program therefore exposes medical students to primary care clinical settings from the very beginning of their matriculation, with the long-term goal of increasing the number of graduates who will pursue careers in family medicine, general internal medicine, and general pediatrics. Students are placed with physician mentors, either one or two students at a time, for one-year intervals. They may elect to switch mentors every semester or have a continuous mentor experience that builds over two years. In addition to providing a broad exposure to the role of a primary care physician, students learn how to integrate information from the patient interview and physical examination into an assessment and treatment plan. The physician mentor provides the student with the opportunity to perform patient histories and physical examinations within the limits of the student’s ability, and educates the student by providing timely feedback and engaging in discussions and explanations of his/her medical decision-making.

M2 Year

Students continue in the IGC Program throughout the M2 year. In addition to this experience, additional formal programs are conducted.

The NSU Career Service Department provides valuable information and resources for students. Annually, a representative conducts informational workshops for COM students to assist them in preparing for the residency application process.

Career advising is a critical component of the experience that students attending NSU-COM realize during their clinical training years. Advising occurs in many fashions and takes on many different forms in support of clinical training.

Initially, students seek out mentoring opportunities as they select the hospital sites they wish to attend for their clinical training experiences. The Office of Clinical Education sponsors a hospital Track Day during which our M2 students meet with clinical faculty from our major teaching affiliates. During Track Day, students are encouraged to ask specific and personal questions of our faculty regarding our core clinical training sites to assist them in formulating a decision tree about where to train in their M3/M4 years. The mentoring experience continues, as our students are encouraged to visit our clinical training affiliates to further solidify their decision-making processes. During these visits, our M2 students mingle with M3/M4 students, residents, and faculty at our clinical training sites, tour the facilities, and continue to ask pointed questions to enhance their knowledge of each of these sites.

The struggle to identify residency opportunities and navigate the perils of the graduate medical education (GME) match process further allows for significant mentoring opportunities to occur. The Office of Clinical Education annually sponsors a Hospital Day in which many GME program representatives from the local community and distant sites converge on NSU-COM. During Hospital Day, our students enjoy the opportunity to mingle with many different GME program representatives in order to assist them in making residency choices. Similarly, The Office of Clinical Education and the Office for Student and Administrative Services provides lectures about the residency application process and the multiple GME match programs to help orient all students to these processes.

M3 and M4 Years

The mentoring opportunities continue and are ongoing in our clinical training years. During clerkships, students seek out and identify with resident and attending physicians whom they work intimately with and subsequently develop mentoring relationships. These interactions afford students the opportunity to receive advice and guidance regarding career choices, difficult patient encounters, and lifestyle/family concerns. In addition, the Office of Clinical Education at NSU-COM maintains an open-door policy that invites students to return to the college to ask similar questions and seek out advice and guidance on multiple issues.

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