Reflection statement for participants in this CME activity:

Mentoring relationships can be critically important and formative for physicians at the pre-medical school, medical student, resident, and attending levels.

The importance and science of mentoring has been increasingly developed and evolving for many years. This article indicates that mentoring at the medical student level is widespread among the students that were surveyed. The principal characteristics of the mentor that related to effective mentoring were compassion and the ability to look at issues using a frame of reference based on the perspective of the medical student. Lack of sufficient availability due to time constraints was found to be a major barrier to successful mentoring of medical students.

These findings may be extrapolatable to other mentoring relationships among physicians and among non-physicians.
Perhaps it is worthwhile to take a moment to pause and specifically acknowledge the mentoring relationships that each of us participate in. Once each of these relationships is identified then perhaps some introspection regarding the issues being addressed by each relationship may be useful. Is each relationship focused on important issues? Is each relationship productive? Is each relationship being actively supported by the persons involved? And other performance characteristics may be worthy of reflection as well.

If a mentoring relationship is thriving and returning substantial value then one probably will favor sustaining the relationship. But can it be improved further?

If a mentoring relationship is not thriving or returning substantial value then a decision to discontinue or transform the relationship is in order.

There is growing and increasingly robust information accumulating in the medical and the business literature regarding mentoring. Perhaps doing a literature search and consulting one or more references may allow a quicker and more insightful modification of a mentoring relationship that yields better mentoring results. Some physicians find that a team of mentors may be more useful than using a single mentor for all purposes. For example, a team of mentors might include separate mentors for development of enhanced skills as a researcher, educator, clinician, and leadership / administrator.
Interestingly, active mentoring to help people become better mentors seems to be more and more common lately. Mentoring also overlaps to some degree with advising and counseling patients and caregivers, consulting to help colleagues, lifelong learning activities, and some other facets of practicing medicine. Mentoring also is becoming increasingly used as a criterion for faculty promotion in academic settings.

So investing in mentoring skills and relationships may be good mentoring advice for physicians in multiple respects.