Designing and implementing e-anubandh: A mentorship program during the COVID pandemic for medical undergraduate students

Background: There is a feeling of uncertainty in the COVID era and the graduate students are facing the challenge of being disconnected from the college. Mentorship has been shown to be essential for the attainment of skills as well as psychological development. The mentor-mentee relationship is a continuous process to dissolve the boundaries, and hence, e-mentoring could be one of the ways in which both the students and teachers connect. Material and Methods: A mentorship program called e-anubandh was designed and implemented. Six hundred medical undergraduate students were grouped with 47 faculty and 94 senior students. An online session was conducted in groups. At the end of the mentorship program, the feedback and perception of the mentors and mentees were taken using both open-ended as well as closed-ended validated questionnaires. Results: A total of 308 (out of 438 who participated) students, 94 senior mentors and 47 faculty mentors, completed the feedback questionnaire. The majority considered the initiative taken by the institute worth appreciating. The mentees and mentors found the program useful in building student–teacher relationships. They opined that such programs should be undertaken more frequently and for longer durations. Conclusion: The e-anubandh mentorship program helped in bridging the gap between the students and teachers created in the COVID era. Both the mentors and mentees were extremely satisfied with this program and such intervention appears to be a promising strategy in the COVID period.