Role of Mentorship in the development of Emergency Medicine Resident
By: Dr. Adeela Irfan, PG-IV (EM), SIH
Mentorship is an important element in career building and success as it can provide professionals, at the beginning of their careers, glass that enables them to look into their future. Mentorship generally fascinates the medical profession, as the beginners get involved in such a relation with their mentors that helps them building their learning curve, getting hold of medical knowledge and philosophy, building healthy professional relation, improving perceptibility to manage medical uncertainties, build courage to face hard times and encourages continue with success and growth.
Mentoring is an art that involves the mentor and the mentee in a relationship that helps evolving character of the mentee. There are no such set standards for mentoring however, it is spread over several stages that can be broadly classified as prescriptive, persuasive, collaborative, and confirmative. There is often neither a clear distinction among these for their occurrence nor any linear relation, and can overlap in due course of professional development of the mentee and engagement of the mentor.
For a healthy mentorship relation, it is essential that both mentor and mentee must devote time and energy, both have good listening skills, both have a meet up with defined agenda, plan, location and time, and set amount of time set aside. At part of mentee, it is essential that one must have stamina and capacity to listen, respect, tolerate, absorb, learn and perform; whereas, at part of mentor, it is essential that the one should be able to better coach, counsel, guide, advise and seek to promote the interests of the mentee at all stages, assist during difficult situations, teach mentee how to think independently, and demonstrate strong character and sprit. The mentor has to perform additional responsibilities like targeting areas of development of mentee, plan creation, define indicators of success, continual reassessment of progress and identify development opportunities for mentee.
Though mentorship is common and a vital component of medical life, however, this personal and dynamic relation is least discussed or described. This relation is usually built on fundamental norms of respect, care, support, correct, improve and deliver. In medical profession, successful mentoring relationships can transpire into performance enhancement, increased research outcomes, and improved job satisfaction, and its significance is very high in the field of emergency medicine (EM). Mentorship is recognized as important aspect of career development of the residents and vital to the growth of EM as a whole.
EM is relatively an emerging field in Pakistan. There are limited training institutes and supervisors in Pakistan that are providing training in the field of EM. The flow of residents in EM in Pakistan is though increasing as compared to recent past, however, there is still a long way to go keeping in view the potential for grow of this field in the country. The role of mentorship becomes more crucial at times when both residents and the study field are in state of development and growth. This stage often offers open field to learn, gain knowledge and expertise, excel in career, make choices and deliver, however, these opportunities can only be tapped prolifically if the mentees are guided and supported by dedicated, honest and sincere mentors. In order to build EM on strong footings, it would be ideal if the training institutes may develop effective mentorship programs for the residents as it has been practiced in other countries of the world, bring in highly qualified, dynamic and persuasive professionals as mentors and facilitate mentorship in the field of EM and establish a strong platform for the growth of EM residents.