Analyzing The Relationship Between The Physician Assistants’ Perceptions of Mentorship and Their Self-Efficacy: A Sample From Izmir Province

Abstract

Objective: Mentors are assigned to physician assistants by the heads of departments they work in after they start their duty. This study seeks to reveal physician assistants’ per-ceptions towards their mentors and the relationship be-tween their such perceptions and self-efficacy.Materials and Methods: The population of this study covers physician assistants working in Ege University Hos-pital, Izmir Atatürk Training and Research Hospital, and Izmir Tepecik Training and Research Hospital. 436 of them were reached within the scope of the study. The sur-vey method was used for data collection to measure physi-cian assistants’ perceptions of mentorship and self-efficacy. The data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0.Results: The physicians working in the training and re-search hospitals have a significantly higher Mentoring Functions Scale total score, significantly higher score for acceptance and confirmation, significantly higher score for sponsorship, and significantly higher score for exposure and visibility compared to the physicians working in the university hospital (p<0.05). The correlation analysis con-ducted between the Mentoring Functions Scale and the Self-Efficacy Scale indicated that there is a relationship be-tween all the sub-factors except for the role modeling sub-factor of the Mentoring Functions Scale and the willing-ness to initiate a behavior sub-factor of the Self-Efficacy Scale.Conclusions: In this study, as relationships were detected between persistence in the face of adversity (self-efficacy) and coaching and acceptance and confirmation (mentoring). Benefiting from the positive role models in physician assistants’ social milieu may not initiate a behav-ior but it helps to maintain a behavior.