What is Student Centered Career Advisement and Counseling?

When to initiate student-centered career advisement?

Use every encounter with a student as an opportunity to discuss career selection. Student-centered career advising takes place within an established mentoring relationship and within all encounters with students outside of the mentoring relationship.

How should a mentor/health practitioner approach student-centered career advisement?

Keep it focused on student NOT on you.

What should a mentor/health practitioner say to the student?

For Year 1 and 2 Students:

• Most of the time, discuss how the student is doing in class and on assignments.
• Discuss what is happening with the student at their Student Continuity Practice (SCP) clinic site as well as any interesting cases, and make suggestions for getting more involved in patient care.
• Encourage students to perform their self-assessments on skills, values, and personality as outlined in the Careers in Medicine website.

For Year 3 and 4 Students:

• Be open-minded about all medical and surgical specialties.
• Never disrespect other specialties.
• Discuss how the student is doing on clinical rotation.
• Spend more time listening than speaking.
• Challenge the student to identify what they liked and did not like about a rotation.
• Ask student how the clerkship rotation relates to their personal assessment of values, skills and self-assessments available through Careers in Medicine by AAMC.
• Refrain from speaking only about your own specialty.