Mentoring during anesthesia residency training: challenges and opportunities.

Abstract

Three key components are required for success at any stage of a medical career: an engaged physician, one or more experienced mentors, and the time to invest in learning. Mentorship is a vital component for success, and few would argue the benefits of having one or more experienced and engaged mentors during their career. In medicine, the many benefits of being mentored have been well established, and some such advantages include enhanced career planning, greater productivity and career satisfaction, and increased confidence as educators. Furthermore, there is a greater likelihood that those who are mentored will pursue an academic career and achieve higher academic deliverables in regard to promotion and scholarly activities, including peer-reviewed publication and grant procurement. Mentorship is also a key to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada CanMEDS Physician Competency Framework (http://www. royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/common/documents/ canmeds/framework/framework_series_1_e.pdf) and should provide trainees with role models in such intrinsic roles as collaborator, communicator, and manager. Results of a recent survey of internal medicine residents in training programs affiliated with Harvard Medical School showed that mentored residents were nearly twice as likely as their non-mentored counterparts to have excellent career preparation. At the same time, effective mentorship should be equally valuable to those choosing careers in community hospital settings by providing guidance in such areas as professionalism, personal growth and development, and work-life balance. Reciprocally, mentors can also benefit from mentorship programs by attaining leadership and coaching skills, the ability to reflect on personal performance, and the satisfaction of sharing experiences and knowledge. Ideally, mentorship programs should be longitudinal; i.e., they should be integrated into medical school curricula and postgraduate training programs, but also extend to the junior faculty level. Despite the known and potential benefits, it is surprising that relatively little has been documented about mentorship specific to the specialty of anesthesia. At a time when our specialty has been challenged academically on several fronts, lack of data on mentorship during residency presents a notable problem. In an effort to close some of this knowledge gap, Zakus et al. present the results of two interesting surveys in this issue of the Journal. These authors developed two related surveys to determine the prevalence of formal mentorship programs in anesthesiology training programs in Canada and to ascertain the overall prevalence of mentorship at the level of the postgraduate trainee. For the purpose of their study, a formal mentorship program was defined as ‘‘one in which there is oversight by the program director or designated faculty and the program facilitates and D. R. Miller, MD (&) C. J. L. McCartney, PhD Department of Anesthesiology, The Ottawa Hospital, The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, General Campus, CCW 1409, 501 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON K1H 8L6, Canada e-mail: dmiller@toh.on.ca