Mentorship in medicine
A critical piece for success
What is mentorship?
Mentorship is the process in which a highly experienced senior person (the mentor) guides the junior person (the mentee’s) professional and personal development. Although prevalent in all professions, particularly in medical education, mentoring plays a critical role in learning, job satisfaction, self-reliance, wellness, paper publications, and grant funding of the mentee [1].
What does it entail?
Mentoring is derived from the example of Mentor who was trusted by Odysseus to be an adviser, a teacher, and a friend to his son in his absence [2]. Although mentoring has been around for many years, it’s become more popular in the medical field in the last two decades. Medical professionals’ jobs involve different components like clinical experience, research, teaching, and patient care. In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world where healthcare has undergone a major revolution, life-long learning has become critical for physicians — mentoring can play a huge role in filling this gap. It’s a great tool in developing medical leadership for high quality patient care. In a profession where there is more focus on technical and academic skills, mentoring helps develop soft skills which are essential for effective leadership [3].
A bidirectional process
Mentoring can be viewed as a bidirectional process. It benefits the mentee by providing guidance on research grants, authoring more research papers, creating advancements in career progression, and increasing job satisfaction; at the same time, it benefits the mentor by giving the mentors a sense of fulfillment, leadership opportunity, career advancement, and learning by teaching. The mentee can also positively influence the mentor in areas of social media and digital technologies. This two-way learning where the younger generation learns from the skills and experience of the older generation and the older generation is influenced by the technology expertise of the young mentees — I think it’s an absolute win-win situation [4]. Both the mentor and the mentee grow by sharing their experiences and strengths and expanding their knowledge [5].
Success of mentorship
The key to a successful mentor-mentee relationship resides in the willingness of the mentor to dedicate time, impart knowledge and skills, and a personal interest in the success of the mentee.
Diversity and equity
Mentoring can help achieve equity and diversity through the mentorship of women and underrepresented minorities [2]. This need is exacerbated by the fact that the underrepresented minority comprises only 7% of full-time faculty [5]. An effective relationship between the mentor and the mentee can lead to professional development of the mentee, open networking opportunities, and strong advocacy. This will help achieve diversity and equity in the workforce [4].
Ethical Support
Further, mentoring can lead to an open forum of discussion where the junior doctor can learn from the senior doctor’s past cases and receive guidance, support, and advice from them. Mentoring also reinforces ethics and professionalism and facilitates an avenue where mentees can express their fears and concerns without judgment [3].
Different forms of mentorship
Based on the personalities of the mentor-mentee along with time and resource availability, one can choose from various different mentoring styles: the classic one-on-one model, the shadowing model, the networking model, group mentoring, casual spot mentoring, and virtual mentoring.
With formal and informal mentoring, we can ensure the development of the next generation of physicians, scientists, and healthcare workers.
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About the Author
Saloni Shah is a senior at the Harker School in San Jose, CA.
References
[1] Straus SE, Sackett DL. Clinician-trialist rounds: 7. Mentoring: why every clinician-trialist needs to get mentored. Clin Trials. 2011;8(6):765–7.
[2] Chopra V, Arora VM, Saint S. Will you be my mentor? — four archetypes to help mentees succeed in academic medicine. JAMA Intern Med. 2018;178(2):175.
[3] Warren OJ, Carnall R. Medical leadership: why it’s important, what is required, and how we develop it. Postgrad Med J. 2011;87(1023):27–32.
[4] Burgess A, van Diggele C, Mellis C. Mentorship in the health professions: a review. Clin Teach. 2018;15(3):197–202.
[5] Choi AMK, Moon JE, Steinecke A, Prescott JE. Developing a culture of mentorship to strengthen academic medical centers. Acad Med. 2019;94(5):630–3.
