A Case Study on Students’ Knowledge of, and Attitudes toward, Mentoring at the Master’s Program in Health and Hospital Administration

Abstract

The Master's Program in Health and Hospital Administration students' attitudes and knowledge about mentoring were being evaluated. The practice of mentoring is described as one in which the mentor assists the mentee in developing personally or professionally. For the skilled and scientifically prepared administrators needed to oversee the rapidly increasing government health services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there aren't many mentorship programs available. This is a cross-sectional survey, design study, conducted at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The participants were students enrolled in the master’s program. The dimensions of the questionnaire were demographics, knowledge about mentoring, understanding of mentoring, perception toward mentoring, attitude toward mentoring, experience with mentoring, and the need of mentoring. A Likert scale was used to measure responses. 85% of the 120 students that were surveyed responded. 92% of respondents said that mentoring is an effective way to help people reach their potential in the attitude category. The average age was 304 years, 75.5% of the participants were female, 36% had successfully completed at least two semesters, and 92% indicated a critical need for mentorship in the master's program. Mentorship is considered an important underutilized educational tool, which has great potential if implemented properly. Our university masters’ students demonstrated a need for mentoring that we believe is a good platform to plan future development of mentor- ship programs.