Physician Mentorship: Why It’s Important and How to Find and Sustain Relationships

Most physicians who make their way into satisfying careers — and especially those who also end up in leadership roles — are usually quick to point out to their younger colleagues that they received some help, perhaps even a whole lot of assistance, along the way. Almost invariably, these physician success stories usually have a common thread: an important mentor, or possibly more than one key mentor, whose guidance proved invaluable.

The Meaning and Significance of Mentorship: A Two-Way Street

The pursuit of a career in medicine is inevitably characterized by successes, challenges, and questions every step of the way. It is invaluable for trainees to have a point of contact to help guide them through challenges and share in the excitement of their successes. The Canadian Medical Association defines mentorship as “a relationship in which a more experienced professional (the mentor) helps someone newer to the field (the mentee) grow both personally and professionally.” Mentorship is widely recognized as an important component of medical training and is beneficial for both the mentee and the mentor.

Narath.io

Narath Carlile is a physician, educator, innovator, speaker and consultant who works to further human flourishing through many channels including health/care, data science, sustainable productivity, and cognitive high performance. His blog contains writing about productivity, resiliency, and thriving for medical professionals.

in-Training: The Agora of the Medical Student Community

in-Training is the agora of the medical student community, the collaborative center for discourse and the free expression of our voices. in-Training seeks to promote students’ self-reflection that is both authentic and empowering; cultivate a diverse, inclusive and interconnected community; and shape the medical student experience, and in doing so, the future of medicine.

My Black Mind is Not Yours—The Minority Trap During Interviews & How to Avoid It

Chase Anderson, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the biases that the medical community continues to impose on medical students & doctors of color, and shares his experiences navigating the residency interview cycle as a person underrepresented in medicine.

Facilitating Effective Training Along the Medical Education Continuum

The AMA’s Facilitating Effective Transitions Along the Medical Education Continuum handbook takes a deep dive into the needs of learners along the continuum of medical education—from the beginning of medical school through the final stage of residency. Divided into complementary learner and faculty sections, this new coaching guide offers critical guidance for navigating each stage of training. The learner sections guide students and residents in acclimating to the various settings and expectations along the spectrum of the medical training environment. In the faculty sections, education leaders will find a blueprint for transition programming and resources to help learners navigate challenges in transitions.

Mentorship in Academic Medicine

Mentoring and Diversity: Tips for Students and Professionals for Developing and Maintaining a Diverse Scientific Community

Getting the Most out of your Mentoring Relationships: A Handbook for Women in STEM

Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges

​Academic Medicine is the official, peer-reviewed journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The journal serves as an international forum for the exchange of ideas, information, and strategies to address the major challenges facing the academic medicine community as it strives to carry out its missions in the public interest. Areas of focus include research, education, clinical care, community collaboration, and leadership.

Assessing the Role of Mentors in Mitigating Burnout & Enhancing Professional Development in Medical Education

Mentoring in medical education helps students meet professional standards by providing constructive feedback and serving as role models. This benefits both mentees and mentors, promoting their development and enhancing leadership and teaching skills. This study explores the link between volunteer mentors' behaviors, as perceived by medical students, and their impact on students' experiences, including burnout and professional identity formation.

Medical Student Mentoring Guide

In medical education, mentoring fosters professional identity, professionalism, research involvement, career planning, and overall student well-being, particularly benefiting those underrepresented in medicine. This resource is designed for faculty mentoring medical students, offering tools and a framework for mentor-mentee interactions.

What Do Medical Students Want From a Mentor?

While the medical education literature lacks a standard definition of mentoring, the diverse goals and development of medical students demand personalized, flexible mentoring approaches. Key roles include coach, advisor, teacher, counselor, and sponsor. These relationships are grounded in mutual trust and enhance the mentee's psychosocial and career development. Mentees appreciate mentoring relationships for their positive influence on career planning and research, viewing mentors as counselors, idea providers, and role models.

Peer Mentorship & First-Year Inclusion: Building Belonging In Higher Education

An inclusive academic environment is crucial for student well-being and fostering a sense of belonging. Peer mentoring is an effective strategy to enhance inclusion, leading to improved retention and academic success. Mentors can guide mentees on diversity and inclusion topics like unconscious bias, self-awareness, and micro-aggressions. Through both formal and informal interactions, students and mentors build relationships that extend beyond career guidance and technical training, enhancing students’ well-being and sense of inclusion.

Assessing the Effects of a Mentoring Program on Professional Identity Formation

Medical education has had varied success in fostering professional identity formation among students. Recent data indicates that structured mentoring programs can consistently promote this development. A uniform mentoring approach, alongside personalized, longitudinal support and structured assessments, is crucial for effective mentoring. The focus should now shift to creating assessment tools, like a KPM-based tool, to enhance support and oversight of mentoring relationships.

Strengthening Mentorship in Global Health for US Medical Students

Over the past few decades, US medical students have shown strong interest in global health, prompting many programs to develop related training opportunities. Students stress the importance of mentorship in fostering sustainability, health equity, and cultural competency in population healthcare. As many trainees work in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), mentorship is crucial for understanding the appropriate attitudes, roles, and challenges in these settings. There is a growing need for more global health mentors both in US medical schools and abroad, where mentees acquire skills in unfamiliar environments.

Mentorship of US Medical Students: A Systematic Review

Mentoring of medical students remains a core pillar of medical education, yet the changing landscape of medicine has called for new and innovative mentoring models to guide students in professional development, career placement, and overall student well-being. This review identifies & describes models of mentorship for US medical students. 

Factors Influencing Underrepresented Medical Students’ Career Choice in Surgical Subspecialities

Surgical subspecialties rank among the least racially and gender diverse of the medical specialties. This systematic review evaluates factors that influence female, gender and sexual minority (GSM), and underrepresented in medicine (URiM)-identifying medical students' decision to pursue a career in a surgical subspecialty. In an effort to understand why these inequities exist and identify areas for improvement, there is a growing body of literature aimed at understanding why medical students are encouraged or discouraged from pursuing a career in surgery.

“Value My Culture, Value Me”: A Case for Culturally Relevant Mentoring in Medical Education & Academic Medicine

Mentoring programs are one mechanism used to increase diversity and participation of historically underrepresented groups in academic medicine. However, more knowledge is needed about the mentoring experiences and how culturally relevant concepts and perspectives may influence diverse students, trainees, and faculty success. The use of cultural relevance indicators can inform the creation and evolution of mentoring programs towards holistic support of historically underrepresented trainees and faculty. Implications also focus on the development of mentors and championing the incorporation of cultural humility in the mentoring process. 

The Importance of Mentors & How to Handle More than One Mentor

Working with multiple mentors is a critical way for students to expand their network, gain opportunities, and better prepare for future scholastic or professional ventures. However, students from underrepresented groups (UR) are less likely to be mentored or have access to mentors, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Having multiple mentors at each training stage is critical for student success. Many students are knowledgeable of the mentee-to-mentor relationship; however, students often lack a deeper understanding of how to best foster this relationship for ultimate academic achievement.

What Makes Mentors Thrive? An Exploratory Study of their Satisfaction in Undergraduate Medical Education

Mentoring medical students with varied backgrounds and individual needs can be challenging. Mentors’ satisfaction is likely to be important for the quality and sustainability of mentorships, especially in programs where the mentor has responsibility for facilitating a group of mentees. Our findings suggest that mentors’ overall satisfaction is closely linked to their experiences of fulfilling mentor-student relationships and personal and professional development. Mentors’ satisfaction may be decisive for the pedagogical quality and the sustainability of group mentorship programs in medical education. 

Mentoring Future Mentors in Undergraduate Medical Education

Efforts to support mentoring programs facing shortages of experienced clinical mentors have yielded an unexpected benefit. Introducing peer mentoring has not only filled gaps in practice, structure, support, and oversight but has also allowed mentees in peer-mentoring roles to gain experience under senior supervision. This study assesses the experiences of peer mentors within a local research mentoring program to enhance this initiative.

Twelve tips for interfacing with the new generation of medical students

iGen, or Generation Z, is the latest cohort of health professions students, having grown up with technology embedded in their lives. Influenced by the rise of social media and widespread internet access since birth, they experience reduced face-to-face interactions and seek immediate information. Health professions educators should understand iGen's unique traits to enhance student success and learning environments. These twelve tips explore research-based characteristics of iGen students and offer key considerations for adapting pedagogy to meet their needs. By implementing these strategies, educators can encourage lifelong learning and skill development, empowering iGen to thrive.

Carving a Path to Leadership: Strategies & Interventions

Leadership is most effective when it reflects the community that it serves. The efficacy, innovation, and outcomes of academic medicine are severely limited where there is a lack of women in leadership, and particularly women of color. Gleaning insights from current chairs and deans, as well as covering the data on WOC in leadership, this webinar will kick-start real dialogue about our current approaches and needed changes to make changes in the leadership of academic medicine. 

Advancing Racial Equity Webinar Series

Alarming disparities within the COVID-19 pandemic — such as higher hospitalizations and death rates among Black, Latino and Native communities — are sadly predictable and highlight the urgent need to address the root causes of health inequities. APHA hosted this webinar series to give an in-depth look at racism as a driving force of the social determinants of health and equity. This series explores efforts to address systems, policies and practices designed to limit and shape opportunities for people of color. Our presenters highlight collective and individual actions we can take to advance racial equity and justice. The webinar is free but CME credits are available with purchase.

Coaching Skills in Medical Education & Life

Leading the Way to Equity: Creating a Safe and Equitable Environment for All

The Nocturnists

The Nocturnists is an award-winning medical storytelling podcast, hosted by physician Emily Silverman. It feature personal stories from frontline clinicians, conversations with healthcare-related authors and art-makers, and special podcast documentary series. 

Academic Medicine Podcast

Meet medical students and residents, clinicians and educators, health care thought leaders and researchers in this podcast from the journal Academic Medicine. Episodes chronicle the stories of these individuals as they experience the science and the art of medicine. Guests delve deeper into the issues shaping medical schools and teaching hospitals today. Transcripts available at academicmedicineblog.org. 

Dare to Lead with Brene Brown

The Dare to Lead podcast is a mix of solo episodes and conversations with change-catalysts, culture-shifters, and as many troublemakers as possible. Innovating, creating, and building a better, more just world requires daring leadership in every part of our daily lives – from work to home to community. Together, we have conversations that help us show up, step up, and dare to lead. Transcripts available at Transcripts available at https://brenebrown.com/podcast-show/dare-to-lead/

The Curbsiders 

The Curbsiders is an Internal Medicine Podcast featuring board-certified Internists as they interview (“curbside”) the experts to provide listeners with clinical pearls, practice-changing knowledge, and bad puns. No boring lectures here, just the stuff you wish they’d taught in medical school and residency.

The Undifferentiated Medical Student

The Undifferentiated Medical Student (TUMS) podcast assists medical students in selecting a specialty and planning their medical careers. By interviewing physicians from over 120 specialties listed on the AAMC's Careers in Medicine website, the podcast explores 1) each specialty, 2) how physicians chose their field, and 3) general career planning advice. TUMS aims to clarify specialty details and offer virtual mentorship to help students advance beyond being undifferentiated.

The Medicine Mentors

This project interviews top physician performers to uncover the secrets behind their success. What key principles led them to their goals? What sets them apart? What critical decisions shaped their destinies? Medical School and Residency provide a unique opportunity to learn, pass boards, and lay a foundation for our professional and personal lives for the next 50 years.

AMSA ad lib

AMSA ad lib is the American Medical Student Association's podcast, bringing together the intimate perspectives of medical students and experts on topics ranging from specialty selection and personal finance to technological developments in medicine's near future.

Tools & Resources for First-Generation Medical Students

“As a medical student, you are joining a professional culture where relationships formed with supervisors can be very important for career mentorship and letters of recommendation. How do you dress in the professional environment? What is expected of you in the clinic and in the hospital?  Are you fully oriented to be successful? The resources in this online toolkit may be useful for students, medical school professionals, and families of students who seek to support, guide, and advocate for first-generation students as they navigate through medical training.”

Tools & Resources for Advisors of First-Generation Medical Students

“Medical students who are the first in their families to graduate from college bring unique strengths to medical school. These first-generation college graduates, and others who come from backgrounds with limited exposure to medicine, may also have unique needs and face challenges that are not always readily recognized by their schools.”

Diversity & Inclusion Toolkit Resources

This web page hosts various resources related to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sphere of academic medicine, including resources exploring privilege, power, and microaggressions.

Anti-Racism Education Collection

The MedEdPORTAL Anti-racism in Medicine Collection provides educators with peer-reviewed educational innovations that aim to cultivate anti-racist, inclusive learning environments that foster culturally responsive patient care. By adapting these published activities, educators will be able to embed anti-racist frameworks into medical curricula, addressing implicit bias and historical injustices in medicine; develop health care professionals who understand the social determinants of health and can provide equitable care to patients from diverse backgrounds; and facilitate critical reflection and self-awareness among learners, fostering open dialogue about race and health care disparities.

This collection is a key topic of the MedEdPORTAL Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Collection.

Anti-Racism & Race Literacy: A Primer & Toolkit for Medical Educators

As medical educators and clinicians, we are often called upon to discuss race and racism, and to address health disparities while teaching and delivering care. As educators, we have a responsibility to our learners and community to deepen our understanding of the complex mechanisms and manifestations of racism, and to intentionally dismantle racism in the learning environment and in clinical medicine. In this primer and toolkit, we seek to provide new and existing faculty with a shared understanding of introductory concepts and tools with which to engage learners and colleagues in discussion on the topics of health disparities, social justice, bias, and racism. 

Cultural Resource Guide

This UVM Cultural Resource Guide is for those living or considering living in the Burlington area and who want to learn more about the diverse resources available. We believe this is a vital resource for prospective and current faculty, staff, and students from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and/or identities. Although this resource is not exhaustive, we hope it gives you a better sense of the diversity of resources available to you in the area.

Larner College of Medicine Academic Guidebook: The Guide to Academic Success to Students from Students (PDF)

This resource was made by students for students as a resource to provide academic information, advice, and support throughout the curriculum. The guidebook is updated yearly by the Student Admissions Leadership Team (SALT). Please keep in mind that the Larner has policies and procedures that the medical community are expected to abide by and are included in the Medical Student Handbook (http://www.med.uvm.edu/studenthandbook/home).

Larner College of Medicine Community Guidebook (PDF)

This resource was made for students by students, compiling information about housing, healthcare, spirituality, transportation, schools, childcare, and other community resources within the Burlington & surrounding area.

UVM Graduate Writing Center

The UVM Graduate Writing Center supports graduate student writing and communication in all fields, at all stages, and in all forms including articles, proposals, posters, and more. Our consultants—experienced graduate writers from programs across the campus—help writers develop skill and confidence. Thanks to support from the UVM Graduate College, our services are free to UVM graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

Wellness Resources

These resources are curated by the Wellness Committee and contain information about therapy, academic accommodations, food, recreation, and other wellness related resources.

Graduate College Resources

These resources from the Graduate College include resources on mentorship, career planning and professional development, finances, and UVM-specific resources and programs.

Together We Learn: Resources for our Journeys in Justice & Inclusion

"Together We Learn" is a collection of resources for work in the realms of justice and inclusion, that was created by the Larner College of Medicine Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, the Dana Health Sciences Library, the Office of Medical Communications, and the medical college's chapters of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA), Social Justice Coalition (SJC), Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA), and other individuals who are passionate about learning more about anti-racism work, social determinants of health, and more. We hope the resources provided on this platform will further our colleagues' and communities' collective understanding of diversity-related issues, so that we can address them in impactful and meaningful ways.