Chair's & Vice-Chair's Column

Welcome Back

By: Dr. Gillian Hawker, Sir John and Lady Eaton Professor and Chair of Medicine

Sadly, the summer holiday season has ended and the pace in academic medicine has picked up once again. I hope everyone got a chance to enjoy the warm weather and to re-charge batteries! I hope our new faculty members and trainees have settled in and that there is less anxiety and more excitement about what's next to come in this wonderfully vibrant academic environment that is the University of Toronto, Department of Medicine.

Over the summer months, we held departmental orientation sessions to welcome incoming PGY-1 and PGY-4 trainees to the department. At these sessions, we confirmed our commitment to providing them a rich and supportive training environment to ensure their future success in internal medicine and its specialties. Vital to this goal, of course, is mentorship.

In this newsletter, we will highlight the efforts that Dr. Sharon Straus, Vice-Chair, Mentorship, Equity and Diversity, and her team are making on your behalf to address a strategic priority: mentorship across the academic lifespan. A multi-faceted approach to mentorship is being launched and will be prospectively evaluated. I want to thank Sharon and her team on your behalf for their efforts to push mentorship to the highest level.

Aligned with an increased emphasis on mentorship, we have made substantial revisions to our Academic Planning Document for new clinical faculty recruits, and to our expectations of departmental and divisional leaders regarding faculty support and mentorship. While this is a work in progress, I am confident we can and will do better to ensure both trainees and faculty are effectively nurtured and guided as they progress along their career trajectories, and know where to turn when there are unforeseen bumps in the road.

Thank you to Dr. Laurie Morrison for getting the department started on this journey and to Sharon and her team for steering us as we move forward. As always, please let us know how we are doing, and if you have any thoughts regarding how to make things even better.

Mentorship in the Department of Medicine

By: Sharon Straus, Vice-Chair, Mentorship, Equity & Diversity

We know from the literature that mentorship has a tremendous impact on academic faculty. Academic physicians who are mentored are more likely to have protected time to do scholarly work, are promoted more quickly, have more publications and research grants, have greater job satisfaction and are more likely to stay at their academic institution than those who don't receive mentorship. [1-3] The impact on mentors (although not as well studied) highlights that engaging with mentees keeps mentors stimulated and interested, and contributes to their job satisfaction.

Under the terrific leadership of Dr. Laurie Morrison and the Faculty Development Committee, a mentorship program has been in place within the Department of Medicine (DoM) for several years. The bi-annual DoM survey has shown that faculty satisfaction with mentorship has increased since the inception of this program. The survey has also documented areas where we could further strengthen mentorship for our faculty. In particular, not everyone has a mentor; the 2015 survey showed that 37% of our faculty members have one or more mentors and clinician-scientists are the most likely group to receive mentorship. Challenges have been identified in ensuring that mentors are supported to develop their mentorship skills and that mentees understand their role in driving the mentoring relationship. There is also a need to ensure that faculty members have access to mentorship throughout their career, including through career transitions.

To meet these needs, a DoM Mentorship, Equity and Diversity (MED) Committee has been struck and has undertaken a series of initiatives to optimize mentorship.

First, with the Chair's support, we have established the role of mentorship facilitators. Each division will have a mentorship facilitator(s) who will facilitate connections between mentors and mentees, troubleshoot for any problems that may arise and provide feedback and support to the mentors and mentees as needed. These individuals will facilitate mentorship for all members of the division, regardless of career stage. For example, they will work with the department division director and the physicians-in-chief to identify mentors for new recruits. Salary support is being provided to these individuals in recognition of the importance of mentorship to our faculty members.

Second, we are establishing regular mentorship workshops for mentors and mentees. The first of these will be held in September as part of the New Faculty Orientation. New recruits, their mentors, and mentorship facilitators will be attending. It will include interactive case-based discussions as well as a career development panel. Further workshops will be available to faculty in later stages of their careers.

Third, we will continue to celebrate excellent mentors. We are continuing with the Robert Hyland Award for Excellence in Mentorship and Dr. Robert Wu (profiled in the newsletter) is leading the working group on optimizing the approach to selecting this individual.

Fourth, we are highlighting the mentorship award winners on the DoM website with testimonials from their mentees. These stories are inspirational and serve as terrific examples of mentorship. In this issue of the newsletter, Dr. Andrea Page launches this showcasing of mentors with her description of Dr. Gary Newton who was recognized for his outstanding mentorship with receipt of the 2016 mentorship award.

Fifth, we created a mentorship toolkit that is provided on the newly launched DoM website. We encourage you to submit additional tools and resources that you have found useful in your own mentorship activities or to nominate ideas for the creation of other tools.

Sixth, we will monitor mentorship in our divisions through quantitative and qualitative mechanisms so that we can further optimize mentorship. We will capture quantitative data through the bi-annual DoM survey and will conduct interviews with DoM faculty in alternate years to complement these data. If any junior faculty members who are focusing on education scholarship are interested in this area, please contact me to get involved with this; we want to encourage scholarly output from these activities.

Finally, we invite all DoM members to offer suggestions on how the mentorship program can be further optimized to meet your needs.

Overall, the MED Committee is dedicated to building capacity in mentorship, facilitating access to effective mentorship for all DoM members, evaluating the impact of the mentorship program, and celebrating our excellent mentors. Mentorship is just one component of the MED Committee and we will highlight activities in other areas in future issues. I thank them for their dedication to ensuring that our faculty is receiving mentorship.

References: Sambunjak D, Straus SE, Marusic A. A systematic review of qualitative research on the m meaning and characteristics of mentoring in academic medicine. JGIM 2010;25:72-8. Sambunjak D, Straus SE, Marusic A. Mentoring in academic medicine: a systematic review. JAMA 2006;296:1103-15. Straus SE, Sackett DL. Mentorship in academic medicine. Oxford: Wiley, BMJ Books, 2014.