Rationale for developing a mentorship program
- Mentorship is a critical catalyst for career advancement and satisfaction and is increasingly recognized as crucial to success in academic medicine
- Mentors can serve as traditional research or clinical mentors, as sponsors, coaches, or facilitators depending on the faculty’s immediate and long-term career needs
Aims of the mentorship program
- The Department of Anesthesiology Faculty Mentorship program strives to:
- Pair each faculty member in the Department with a faculty mentor, aligned with the faculty member’s academic career interests
- Ideally all Department Faculty will participate but it is not mandatory
- Does not replace existing mentee-mentor relationship but could better codify those
- Provide faculty with a comprehensive list of available scholarship opportunities within the Department
- Provide faculty with internal and external scholarship and research resources
- Provide mentors and mentees with resources in the form of learning seminars and an online repository with supplemental tools for academic success and to maximize the benefits of the mentoring relationship
- Pair each faculty member in the Department with a faculty mentor, aligned with the faculty member’s academic career interests
Selection of Mentors and Mentees
- The Departmental mentorship program has approximately 50 hubs of scholarly excellence covering areas of research, education, leadership and service
- Hubs with thematic similarities have been grouped together in affinity groups
- Each hub will have mentors, and each affinity group will be led by a senior mentor
- Hub mentors will be assigned to the affinity group senior mentor as their individual mentor/coach
- Clinical faculty will evaluate available hubs of scholarly excellence (description of the hubs and work done within them are available on the website, and in the REDCap database) and select their top 3 choices, aligning with their career interests and tracks
- The Office of Faculty Affairs will finalize the mentor-mentee pairing based on the faculty preferences and commitments of that hub/mentor, in discussion with the faculty and mentorFaculty and mentor will be notified via communication from the Departmental Office of Faculty Affairs
Expectations of Mentors and Mentees
- Hub mentor should meet individually with mentees within a month of initial assignments to discuss the career goals of each individual faculty, the mentee academic track, and its requirement for promotion
- Mentors and mentees will jointly fill out the “First report and mentorship agreement” in the REDCap mentorship database
- Mentees would be expected to play different roles in the hub scholarship/research activity based on academic track, available CDAs etc., and it would be the responsibility of the mentor to identify the appropriate portfolio within the hub
- Mentor/mentee to set up regular communication expectations (e.g. email, text, in-person) with the goal to keep each other abreast of progress on at least a monthly basis
- Mentor/mentee to meet in person at least once a quarter to go over progress towards goals outlined in the mentorship agreement and institute corrective actions if needed.
- Mentor/mentee will jointly submit a quarterly report outlining the achieved goals, plans for next quarter and identifying any potential barriers for ongoing success
- Senior mentors will play a similar roll in mentoring hub mentors though the interactions would be focused on career advancement and guidance on effective mentoring
- Once every 6 months, senior mentor will meet with each hub mentor and their mentees, to ensure that each of the hubs and its faculty are progressing well in their career