Episode 95: Learn what to look for in a mentor and how they can help you accomplish your goals.

Download transcript: Choosing a Mentor
 Melinials Want Mentorship in Medicine
In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how Millenials want even more mentorship, at least supposedly, than their predecessors. Specifically, I'm looking at an article from the American Psychiatric Association. Their education director, Dr. Hales, put an article, and she was interviewed in a title called "Mentoring Residents: Often a Lesson in Chemistry."
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What she's talking about, primarily, is interpersonal chemistry between mentors. The article states that residency is often about evaluation. It doesn't matter which activity you're involved in with residency. It's not so much about evaluating whether or not the resident is good or bad necessarily, but as a function of professional development, to mirror feedback to the resident to let them know what they're doing effectively and what they need to work on. At least, that's the most hopeful, positive spin you can put on it. As you may have heard in prior episodes, constructive criticism on clinical rotations isn't necessarily painless. In fact, sometimes you have to look for the positive action items after someone reams you and maybe yells at you for a mistake. You have to put a positive spin on that intentionally.

So she makes a statement here that I don't think is based on fact, and I would like to bring under closer scrutiny, as I would encourage you to do any time you hear something that doesn't jibe with your personal experience, or your knowledge, or just doesn't seem to be quite right. Don't necessarily dismiss it, but investigate it, and examine it, and become a little scientists related to things about your medical career, not just medicine itself. For example, she says, "The Millenials, these are individuals coming of age in the new century, want more structure and guidance than the earlier Baby Boomers did." I would like to see a study that asked Baby Boomers in medical education how much mentorship they wanted. Hmmm. How can you make a statement like that? I don't know. You don't have evidence. So I kind of dismiss that. But I do generally enjoy and agree with the topics otherwise presented in this article. For example, this idea about needing interpersonal chemistry.
Definition of Mentorship
So let me back up a step and just kind of describe in my own words what a mentorship relationship is like when you're a resident working with some faculty. In many programs that you would get into, there are faculty that are assigned to supervise you in different capacities. Often you can choose either a formal mentor, if they have a program like that, or maybe it's called career supervision, or something. Hopefully, your program will cut out a little bit of time, as you progress through the program, to meet one on one with a faculty member for guiding you and answering your questions about career decisions, as you do figure out along the way what kind of things you're interested in doing in your medical career. They can give you their tips and guidance. That's a formal relationship. It's not necessarily going to be someone you would go have a beer with, or whatever. Also, their advice can be tainted with recruitment. Sometimes it's a criticism of career advice, if they're really trying to keep you at the program, they might distract or change the subject to that often, and you might not feel comfortable. I would say that this is the time and place to be assertive. If you don't want to go to that program, or stay there, you're going to move away, let them know that if they're trying to be pushy with you. Maybe they'll back off.

On the other hand, I think it's generally a good practice to let your residency program think that there's a possibility that you might stay there, particularly if you've ever had a difficult time in your residency, or your training,