In response to COVID-19 our 2020 MBChB students graduated early to begin their medical careers and help during these unprecedented times. The Development and Alumni Relations Office (DARO), together with the Bristol Medical School, reached out to the doctors in our alumni community to see if they could offer their support and advice during this time, we had an overwhelming response and some truly inspiring and encouraging offers of help.
An incredible 40 alumni offered their time to support our newly graduated MBChB junior doctors, and from those we were able to match 25 students to alumni. These included alumni working in hospitals such as the; BRI, Swindon, Southmead and Taunton. We even had offers of remote support from doctors working outside the Severn Deanery hospitals which was fantastic to receive.
This is what one of our successfully matched junior doctors had to say about the programme:
My mentor and I ended up collaborating on a teaching course, I believe the matching process helped me network far more than we might have otherwise!
Due to the success of the programme, we are now looking into providing this support to next year’s cohort of MBChB graduates. We would like to say a massive thank you to those who were involved and gave up their time for these graduates, your effort and support had a really positive effect.
If mentoring newly- qualified doctors is something that you are interested in doing, please let us know by emailing alumni-volunteers@bristol.ac.uk.