The McMaster Racialized Resident Mentorship Program Evaluation Protocol: Evaluating a racialized resident to racialized staff physician mentorship network on resident sense of belonging and medical training outcomes

The McMaster Racialized Resident Mentorship Program Evaluation will formally evaluate the effectiveness of a racialized resident mentorship network at increasing racialized residents’ sense of belonging to the medical training environment and reducing the racial attainment gap in medical careers. The program is composed of three phases. Phase 1 is an acceptability study of the collection of race0based data from all matriculating residents at McMaster University. Phases 2 and 3 will focus on family medicine residents. Phase 2 is a formal program evaluation of a mentorship network connecting matriculating racialized residents with racialized physician mentors, intended to run for 24 months and using repeat focus groups to explore the impacts of the program on residents’ sense of belonging. Phase 3 is a cross sectional study of graduating family medicine residents, examining associations between residents’ identities and attainment within residency training. The program evaluation will involve formal mentor training, a mentor Community of Practice, and mentor and resident focus groups examining experiences within the program and sense of belonging to the Department of Family Medicine and their training sites. The program process inputs will include: the number of faculty who attend mentor training, and the number of racialized faculty mentors and racialized residents who register for the program; attendance at the Community of Practice; and attendance at focus groups of mentors and residents. An exit survey will assess the number of residents who participated in the program, the duration of participation, expected graduation time, number of mentor meetings. Short term outcomes will be measured at the phase 1 survey and at program enrollment and include: resident awareness of racialized mentors, and sense of support and sense of belonging. Long-term outcomes for the program will be assessed in phase 3, examining associations between resident social identities (including race) and family medicine residency training outcomes. The project results will represent the first investigation of racial attainment in postgraduate medical training in Canada, with changes in residents’ sense of belonging and attainment during residency as indicators of Mentorship program effectiveness. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement Phase 1 of our study is funded by the Racialized Community Leadership Grant in Family Medicine received by AM from the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. https://fafm.cfpc.ca/about/ Phase 2 and Phase 3 of our study is funded by the McMaster Academic Family Medicine Associates Grant Competition, awarded to AM. The funders did not and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Not Applicable The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: This protocol has been approved by the Research in Residency Committee of the Family Medicine Residency Program and the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board (#15807). I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Not Applicable I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Not Applicable I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Not Applicable No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.