The Health Mentors Project was featured in the latest issue of Dalhousie Magazine (page 15).

Despite the rain and the excitement of the Royal Wedding, 44 Health Mentors mobilized themselves to come to the Mentor Appreciation Event on the afternoon of April 29, 2011.  There, they had the opportunity to meet with each other and with program planners and supervisors, and to share their ideas about how to make the program more effective in the 2011/2012 academic year.  This was also an occasion to thank these generous community volunteers for their invaluable contribution to the education of our future health professionals.

Appoximately 575 students took part in this pilot year, including 48 in Saint John.  Students were enrolled in 18 different programs in the Faculties of Health Professions, Medicine, Dentistry, Computer Science and Science at Dalhousie and the School of Nursing at UNBSJ.  They were divided into 151 interprofessional teams, each team connected with one Health Mentor and an individual with a chronic condition and/or disability.  As the year went by, mentors and teams met three to four times to talk about the mentors’ lives, their health and their journey through the healthcare system.  Students did not provide treatment, care or advice; rather, they listened to their mentor’s experience in order to learn about client centred care, chronic conditions and teamwork.

As the first year of this pilot project draws to a close, evaluation is underway, capturing the feedback of students, faculty supervisors and mentors.  The feedback is still being reviewed and analyzed, but we can report that the mentors felt valued being listened to and having the opportunity to influence the education of future health professionals, and many commented on what they gained from the experience.

The Health Mentors program was interprofessional in its conception, its development and its implementation.  Many thanks are owed to the dedicated facutly who participated in program planning, supervision of students and integration of the content into the various curricula, to the Deans of the involved Faculties for their willingness to try a new approach, to the students who undertook this new educational venture, and of course to the mentors, without whom none of this would have been possible.