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Kaitlyn De Stefano, COM ’22, who was paired with Karen Roberts, DO ’01, a Family Medicine/OMM practitioner in Maine, says of the experience:
Sharing my experience as a first year medical student with Dr. Karen Roberts as my mentor has been nothing short of amazing. Entering medical school is overwhelming and having a local mentor has given invaluable insight to what all the work is for. It is often easy to get lost in the testing schedule, the complex nature of biochemistry, and intensity of anatomy but meeting with my mentor once a quarter gave me the opportunity to reflect as well as ask the questions my coursework could not answer. Dr. Roberts has been able to explain things like: 'How do you bill patients?', ‘How do you run your practice?’, ‘What kind of continuing education do you participate in?', ‘Why did you chose your specialty?’ and even the hard ones such as ‘Would you do it again?’. Coming from a supportive family, but without anyone in the medical field, having someone like Dr. Roberts in my life to explain the ins and outs of being a physician every day has added another family member in my life. Dr. Roberts became my sounding board and always helped provide a big picture idea. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to live my first year of medical school getting to know Dr. Roberts and a small glimpse of the world of medicine outside of UNE COM’s campus. I look forward to spending more time with Dr. Roberts and learning even more.
Eric Matthews, DO ’01, an internal medicine physician in Massachusetts, connected with his mentor when he was in Portland for the weekend. “It was enjoyable to meet her and her husband, and understand her current concerns. My wife and I were able to give a good overview about what life could look like for the next 10 years. I think the face-to-face meeting we had will help promote future communication.”
Mike McCarten, DO ’83 is a family medicine physician in NH, and has interacted with a number of COM students and alumni whom he believes are “tremendous clinicians, many serving in leadership roles,” leading to his assessment that UNE COM is “accepting and graduating great docs!” Of his mentee, he says, “While we had lunch on campus, I presented a couple of interesting cases I had seen in the previous week to demonstrate the variety of cases a family physician sees on a regular basis. At no point did I lose him. He spoke to the basis of the diseases we discussed; he knew the work ups and had a good idea on treatment. Well done on his part.”
Statistically speaking, not every mentor/mentee match is guaranteed to be successful, but the hope is that UNE COM will help foster student/alumni connections that will continue to grow organically after the academic year is done. While meeting face-to-face can be advantageous in establishing a relationship, it is not essential for success. COM Mentoring expanded from the initial pilot test in August 2018 to include alumni across the US. Many second-year students were paired with mentors whom they had never met, and communicated through virtual or other means such as FaceTime, email,
"Entering medical school is overwhelming and having a local mentor has given invaluable insight to what all the work is for."
Kaitlyn De Stefano, COM '22