Purpose: To develop a deeper understanding of mentoring by exploring lived experiences of academic medicine faculty members. Mentoring relationships are key to developing productive careers in academic medicine, but such alliances hold a certain mystery.
Method: Using qualitative techniques, between November 1999 and March 2000, the authors conducted individual telephone interviews of 16 faculty members about their experiences with mentoring. Interviews were taped and transcribed and authors identified major themes through multiple readings. A consensus taxonomy for classifying content evolved from comparisons of coding by four reviewers. Themes expressed by participants were studied for patterns of connection and grouped into broader categories.
Results: Almost 98% of participants identified lack of mentoring as the first (42%) or second (56%) most important factor hindering career progress in academic medicine. Finding a suitable mentor requires effort and persistence. Effective mentoring necessitates a certain chemistry for an appropriate interpersonal match. Prized mentors have clout, knowledge, and interest in the mentees, and provide both professional and personal support. In cross-gender mentoring, maintaining clear boundaries is essential for an effective relationship. Same-gender or same-race matches between mentor and mentee were not felt to be essential.
Conclusions: Having a mentor is critical to having a successful career in academic medicine. Mentees need to be diligent in seeking out these relationships and institutions need to encourage and value the work of mentors. Participants without formalized mentoring relationships should look to peers and colleagues for assistance in navigating the academic system.
Mentoring relationships are often cited as key to developing productive careers in law, business, and medicine.1-3 Palepu and colleagues surveyed 3,013 full-time faculty in academic medicine using the 177-item National Faculty Survey (NFS). They focused their analyses on 1,808 junior faculty and found more than 50% of respondents had had a recent mentoring relationship. There was no difference in prevalences of a mentoring relationship with respect to gender or racial and ethnic minorities, although most mentors in the study were white men, a fact that highlighted the limited numbers of women and minorities in senior positions.4
Mentoring relationships are prevalent in academic medicine. Studies have shown that faculty members who identified a mentor felt more confident than their peers, were more likely to have a productive research career, and reported greater career satisfaction.4-6 Recognizing the importance of mentoring, many institutions have created formalized mentoring programs to assist faculty members with career advancement.7-9 Although mentoring has been well described in other professions, the characteristics of successful mentoring relationships in academic medicine are just beginning to be described.
Recently, Ramanan et al. surveyed over 700 Harvard faculty members who reported having had a mentor and found several characteristics of the mentoring relationship to be associated with increased overall satisfaction with mentoring. These qualities were keeping in touch regarding progress, not abusing power, helping to build professional networks, providing career and research advice, and helping the protégé improve communication skills.10
The most common form of mentoring is a relationship in which a senior individual works to promote the career of a more junior individual. Mentoring, as described by the joint committee of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine consensus statement on mentoring, is a personal and professional relationship.12 In its traditional form, this complicated relationship is subject to transference, countertransference, personality clashes, and lack of congruence of the mentor's and the protégé's goals.7 The studies of mentoring in academic medicine to date have used primarily quantitative methods which, although helpful, give only limited insight into the experiences of the protégé in this complex relationship.
The purpose of our study was to develop a deeper understanding of mentoring by exploring the lived experiences of academic medicine faculty members. We sought to describe empirically the mentoring experience, describe qualities of more and less effective mentoring relationships, and develop a language to describe these relationships. This knowledge should foster more meaningful discussion and assist with developing mentoring programs. Finally, we explored special challenges in mentoring with respect to gender and race, as well as options for those who do not have a mentor.