Mentorships provide a vital component to students of color in medical school

Editors note: Harmony Saunders, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, talks about the importance of having a mentor, especially a mentor who is also a person of color and in the same specialty. Below is a transcript of her story.

“I’m in an MD PhD program, which is combined with a medical doctorate, and a research doctorate at any institution,” Harmony Saunders, MD, PhD candidate class of 2024. “Again, you’re one of the few, if any person of color, less than 1% of ENTs are black. And I think if you combine any person of color in ENT, you’re maybe at 1.7%. It’s hard to find students of color who want to go into competitive specialties just because we’re all afraid that we can’t do it. So it’s two-sided that we feel like we can’t do it. No one that looks like us, the few that look like us, don’t meet us to mentors us to get there. So it’s kind of a matching of the minds. And I do think the mentor I’ve found is happy that I want to go into ENT”

“As a black person in surgery, but also as a black woman in surgery, my experience was very isolating,” Carrie Francis, MD, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of Kansas Medical Center. “Trying to identify people that had similar experiences, and backgrounds that I could lean on support and celebrate with was hard and that is important. That is a huge part of really making it through any rigorous type of program.”

“Representation matters and we see outcomes that are basically based on the fact that our individuals of color, when they have a physician that’s of like a background, tend to be more compliant with medication regimens and there’s an increased level of trust,” Michael Moncure, MD, professor, department of surgery, University Health.

But I’ve seen the fruits of those relationships from my mentees in that they are going into medical school, getting into their top residencies and not just surviving or making it through the pathway, but thriving in that space where they’re able to own their future,” Francis said.

“Seeing someone like that in Kansas City in my environment was pretty amazing,” Saunders said. “And to even know the field exists and then to see someone that looks like me was like, wow, this is something I could do.”