Adaptations to mentoring and peer mentor training at the medical faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major adjustments in health care systems and significantly affected medical education. Accordingly, our mentoring program MeCuM-Mentor had to expand its virtual elements, in order to continue to meet the needs for mentoring at the medical faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Methods: Here we report on our recently implemented online formats to facilitate training for currently coached peer mentors, as well as the introduction of an online consultation hour and a new social mentoring event called PubQuiz. Results: First results demonstrated feasibility of the above-mentioned virtual formats, which were positively rated by the participants in small voluntary evaluation questionnaires. Utilization rates indicate existing need for mentoring during the pandemic. In addition, the new event PubQuiz promotes social interaction among peers during isolation due to COVID-19. Conclusion: With the transition to online formats, mentoring at the Medical Faculty could be continued during COVID-19. The newly introduced mentoring event PubQuiz will be repeated. However, it remains unclear to what extent online formats can replace in-person one-to-one mentoring conversations or peer mentoring meetings.

Restructuring career counselling ventures of a mentoring program for medical students in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, medical curricula face major challenges. This also applies to mentoring programs, where face-to-face meetings are considered essential. Methods: The LMU Munich medical faculty mentoring program (MeCuM-Mentor) adapted to counteract the unforeseen pause of conventional course formats and associated uncertainty of many students. We here present an approach to transform the established large scale or group mentoring events of our program into online formats. Three projects are presented as examples: 1. HowTo Klink (HK), mainly informative in nature and with peer-mentoring character, 2. FacharztDuell (FAD) and 3. "Auf ein Gespräch mit... (AEGM)", both with a focus on career counseling. Results: Initial evaluations show a similarly high participation rate and a high level of satisfaction among the participating students. Students' evaluation of whether the projects presented should take place in presence or in online format has so far shown no clear trend. Conclusion: Prospective studies are necessary to investigate the effectiveness of these online formats and analyse differences in participant behaviour. The extent to which online mentoring can replace classic mentoring functions has to be discussed anew.

Vasorelaxation by new hybrid compounds containing dihydropyridine and pinacidil-like moieties.

The synthesis and pharmacological properties of a novel type of vasorelaxant hybrid compounds are described. The investigated compounds originate from fluorinated 4-aryl-1,4-dihydropyridines, which are known calcium channel blockers, and/or from fluorinated analogues of pinacidil, which is an opener of ATP-sensitive potassium channels. In particular, we studied the most potent hybrid, 2,6-dimethyl-3,5-dicarbomethoxy-4-(2-difluoromethoxy-5-N-(N' '-cyano-N'-1,2,2-trimethyl-propylguanidyl)-phenyl)-1, 4-dihydropyridine (4a), together with its parent compounds, the dihydropyridine 1b and the pinacidil analogue 3. In isolated rat mesenteric arteries, micromolar concentrations of 4a relaxed contractions exerted by K(+)-depolarization or by norepinephrine. The latter effect was sensitive to the potassium channel blocker glibenclamide. Micromolar 4a also inhibited [(3)H](+)-isradipine and [(3)H]P1075 binding to rat cardiac membranes, and it blocked L-type calcium channels expressed in a mammalian cell line. The respective parent compounds 1b and 3 were always more potent and more selective regarding calcium channel or potassium channel interaction, respectively. In contrast, 4a combined both effects within the same concentration range, indicating that it may represent a lead structure for a novel class of pharmacological hybrid compounds.