Through a close relationship with the students, mentoring programs offer personal support and an environment for professional development. The objective was to understand the lived experience of medical students of Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, in the Mentoring Program. A documentary research was performed with phenomenological analysis of the students’ reports at the end of the Mentoring Program. The elements of the experience in the reports present three thematic groups: 1 The context of Mentoring, 2 The experience of Mentoring, 3 The experience’s evaluation. The Mentoring relationship contributed both in facing the vicissitudes of training and in the exercise of skills such as listening, acceptance and communication, fundamental skills contributing to the good performance of the medical professionals in their daily life. The experience of mentoring students showed intersections between the support for students and the demands of training in humanistic areas in medical education.
Mentoring; Tutoria; Medical education; Documentary research; Phenomenology