Mentoring in medicine is an integral part of the adaptation process to new professional activities and settings, as well as one of the critical aspects of the algorithm for improving professional skills among future healthcare workers. Preference for collaborating with a mentor is a natural component of the need to adjust better to an environment. Mentoring may be viewed as an opportunity to obtain practical expertise and find an implementation for theoretical knowledge. Hence, the desire to have a mentor stems from the need to acquire information that may not be available in academic materials, and which is gained through situations that more experienced medical professionals face.
Finding a balance between informal and formal types of communication for a mentor and a mentee, as for me, is a crucial factor in establishing productive relationships. Geraci and Thigpen (2017) state that “informal mentoring is typically initiated by the mentee and focused exclusively on mentee‑identified needs with no formal institutional oversight or pre-specified processes” (p. 160). Nevertheless, a rapport that is excessively informal and disregards the training points outlined by a mentor may not seem like a sufficiently adequate version of mentor-mentee relationships. From my perspective, creating an equilibrium that may slightly tip towards informal interactions is the preferred type of mentoring.
The outcome of such an agreement may somewhat depend on the compatibility between two parties, which is not easy to predict even if a mentor fits perfectly the idea that a mentee has in this regard. At the same time, senior doctors tend to possess immense institutional memory, they know what types of treatment failed, what processes and tendencies repeat in medicine over time, and how to approach certain kinds of patients better (Loxterkamp, 2017). Moreover, involving more senior doctors in mentoring could also be beneficial for them, as retirement does not come easy for medical professionals, perhaps due to the habit of feeling especially needed and even indispensable (Loxterkamp, 2017). Furthermore, finding a good mentor necessitates a clear vision of one’s career path, which leads to an understanding of the expected goals of mentoring relationships. From my standpoint, a mentor is a doctor who, except for being abundantly experienced, knows possible pitfalls of mentoring and can define objectives for a specific mentee.
The usage of time between meetings with a mentor is crucial for the overall results of the relationship. As Henry-Noel et al. (2018) notice, “pro-activism is required concerning keeping up with meetings and ensuring that steps are taken prior to those meetings to ensure that they are productive in furthering the mentees in achieving their goals” (p. 4). Additional solitary learning sessions, reflections on the content of meetings, note-taking, and deliberating the questions that need to be answered during the next one seem like activities that can ensure higher productivity of a mentoring session.
It does not seem uncommon for graduates in the fields connected to medicine to have a high level of theoretical training and possess sufficiently developed skills but still experience uncertainty. It may be associated with personal qualities, lack of experience, the atmosphere in the working environment, or shortcomings in the educational process. Mentoring in medicine is one of the ways to help students overcome uncertainty and cope with anxiety related to aspects of their profession. Mentoring plays a crucial role in the future adaptation of professionals in the workplace and affects the quality of their work.
References
Geraci, S. A., & Thigpen, S. C. (2017). A review of mentoring in academic medicine. The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 353(2), 151–157.
Henry-Noel, N., Bishop, M., Gwede, C. K., Petkova, E., & Szumacher, E. (2018). Mentorship in medicine and other health professions. Journal of Cancer Education, 1-9.
Loxterkamp, D. (2017). No country for old men: On mentoring in medicine. BMJ, 56-57.