Mentors play a vital role in students’ professional and personal development, enhancing both explicit academic knowledge and implicit knowledge about professionalism, ethics, and the art of medicine. Understanding the need for a variety of approaches to mentorship, faculty at Florida State University’s College of Medicine and Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine have developed a unique interdisciplinary mentoring opportunity via the production of a student-run, in-house literary arts journal. Both Florida State University’s HEAL: Humanism Evolving through Arts and Literature and Florida International University’s Eloquor provide a variety of mentoring opportunities between faculty and students and between students at different levels of training. This lecture session will describe how a literary arts journal can serve as an avenue for effective medical student mentorship. The discussion will include an overview of the different types of mentoring relationships possible with the production of a journal, the benefits of this unique mentoring opportunity, and concrete examples of mentorship in action. Attendees will also learn tips and strategies for starting similar programs at their own institutions.
Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to: