A qualitative study of the effectiveness of a cascading mentorship model in developing canmeds competencies in postgraduate medical education

The Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS) framework defines competencies that physicians require to meet patients’ needs, including advocacy, scholarship, communication, collaboration, professionalism, and leadership, all of which can be cultivated through mentorship activities. The Advocacy Mentorship Initiative (AMI) at the University of Toronto (UofT) utilizes a cascading mentorship model (CMM). In this model, resident mentors (RMs) mentor undergraduate medical student mentors (MSMs), who in turn mentor youth raised in at-risk environments.