Mentorship can play a large role in a family physician’s personal and career development. Furthermore, by building a better and more productive work force, mentorship can shape the field of family medicine as it builds a niche within academic medicine and the research arena. The purpose of this brief article is to highlight the importance of mentorship, identify its major components, and address a few individual and institutional barriers to mentorship and steps to overcome them.
Mentorship is a type of formal social support that is important for medical professional development for both career selection and advancement.1,2 Social support can be categorized into 4 types: (1) Emotional support—providing empathy and trust, (2) Instrumental support—providing concrete assistance, (3) Informational support—providing advice and information, and (4) Appraisal support—providing constructive feedback and encouragement.3,4 Although each type of social support is important, mentors should not feel like they need to provide all 4 types. Often fellows and beginning academic clinicians create their own networks of several mentors who offer complementary types of support. Some mentors can have very specialized skills important for a specific project, while others can develop a trusting relationship that spans a mentee’s entire career. Each mentor relationship is important to the mentee’s development and can fit together with other experiences to complete the jigsaw puzzle that is their career. While providing mentorship during an individual’s official education and training is common, it is important to continue seeking and offering mentorship in the early career years and beyond. Mentorship plays an important role in the success of early careers, particularly in academic medicine.5
Academic physicians, unfortunately, may be hesitant to provide mentorship, perhaps because they feel they do not have enough experience or time. Mentees, however, need mentors with varied levels of experience. More experienced mentors provide perspective and opportunities, while less experienced mentors, who have just completed the work that the mentee desires to accomplish, can provide more direct assistance. Often less experienced mentors, even someone who is simply 1 year more advanced than the mentee, can provide crucial and more up-to-date advice. Even if mentors have limited time, just spending a short 30 minutes with a mentee can be very helpful. Mentors can provide as much or as little time as they have available; the key is to be up-front with the mentee about how large a role one can feasibly play. Newer faculty should also note that the role of mentee and mentor can be held simultaneously, just as during medical training the roles of both student and teacher are often held simultaneously. Experience with one role can strengthen the other.
Although mentorship is usually provided at an individual level, the benefits are seen at both the individual and organizational levels. Therefore, organizational changes should be made that promote mentorship within a department by removing institutional barriers and incentivizing mentorship. This is especially important if we desire to improve the research capacity of family physicians. Even if family physicians are provided with similar research training as pediatricians and internal medicine doctors, they receive less mentorship after fellowship, are less likely to hold clinician/researcher faculty positions, and publish fewer articles per year.6 If we desire to increase the participation and productivity of family medicine in research, then we have to ensure that we are building a strong foundation, and that cannot be done without providing mentorship to new researchers.
The North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) is taking steps toward this end through the development of a new mentorship workshop and program that creates opportunities for long distance mentorship for protégés who cannot find local mentors. The goal of the program is to “increase the number, quality, efficiency, and productivity of research mentors in family medicine.”7 The Grant Generating Project, funded by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, and NAPCRG, is an opportunity for education and mentorship for new researchers who may not have local assistance for their research activities. While these programs are great resources, individual departments should also expect and support mentorship among their faculty by providing protected time for research and mentoring. Until we establish a stronger research presence within each family medicine department, we should continue to develop opportunities for long distance mentorship and look to our experienced colleagues in other departments.
- © 2010 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.
