Role of mentorship in development of emergency medicine resident

 

From the banks of Ganges to the docks of Thames, torch of knowledge has been passed through the sacred relationship of a mentor and a student. Every Plato needs a Socrate. The same goes for the residency, the most crucial part in the clinical training of a medical resident. And when it comes to emergency medicine, the mammoth responsibility and challenge of the job requires that the mentors be at the peak of their professional conduct. The ebb and flow of an ER cannot be matched, the lives are at stake, even seconds mark the difference between someone taking their last breath and someone walking away unscathed by the dangerous pathologies.

 

Dealing with such diverse clinical scenarios, a mentor needs to be, most importantly, calm. In the face of adversity, where at times you don’t know who or what the culprit is, you need the soothing serenity to make decisions that matter. Fear of unknown, diagnostic fallacies, all these serpents raise their heads, but the teacher needs to exhibit the command over these and stairs his way out of the troubled waters to the safe shores, where the patient is out of danger. And the journey does not end there, during all this process he has to impart these values to the student or the resident, teaching him how its done.

 

Moreover, the best teacher is experience. Mentors have to lead from the front. During an ordinary ER shift, a myriad of life experiences represent, either in the form of an acutely ill patient or an attendant being over zealously aggressive about their patient’s treatment and hospital protocols. Dealing with these two things side by side require inherent qualities of character. Inculcating these properties is the job of the mentor. And imbibing these qualities is the responsibility of the resident.

 

However, only clinical acumen is not the only vital thing when you are working as an ER physician. Owning and operating with the whole ER team, that projects all the efforts to make crucial decisions about matters of life and death is all that matters. So ultimately a mentor has to be a team player. Encouraging those who work good and inspiring those who lack at a certain task.

 

Finally, the amount of values and traits required to mentor residents, specially in a roller coaster environment like ER, exceeds expectations at so many fronts. Its not an easy task, manoeuvring your path amid the maze of uncertain clinical outcomes and varied human behaviours at a given time, needs Himalayan self control and aptitude. At the end of the day, trying to save lives is a difficult job, and preparing physicians to deal with these emergencies is an even tougher one. But someone has to do it. And mentors that do this, through their selfless act for our younger generations owe a debt of gratitude from their students that can never be repaid. In the end, nothing stays as it is, except the echoes of a good deed, that reverberate in the echelons for ages to come. And there is nothing better than the satisfying experience of teaching another human being how to save a life.