Mentorship: Finding and Being a Mentor

Abstract

In Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, Mentor was Odysseus’ trusted friend. Odysseus asked Mentor to look after and teach his son while he left to fight in the Trojan War. Physicians require a solid base of clinical science and technical procedures within their specialties, a knowledge base founded in residency and supplemented throughout training. However, the everyday practice of medicine demands the balance of many professional roles such as leadership, administration, education, and research alongside our personal goals of fulfilling family life and non-medical interests. Finding the right balance of all these roles and building this informal expertise is not something that is easily found in textbooks. Building harmony in these multifaceted roles forwards protection from physician burnout and directly results in increased work satisfaction and longevity in a physician’s career. This soft curriculum is increasingly being sought through mentorship, a relationship between a newer physician and an experienced advisor or mentor. Finding a mentor who has traveled a road similar to your own path is a crucial aspect of feeling supported through our personal and professional challenges in medicine. Generating a niche area within our specialty in which we can claim expertise comes with understanding our own inclinations in medicine and life. Let us review why and how we should foster these mentorship relationships in Emergency Medicine.