Mentorship Matters June 2023: Mentorship in Adversity

In our last column, Dr. Catherine Yu, Mentorship lead for the Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio, shared a personal story of mistreatment that she experienced in her professional life as well as a resource on how to be an ally. The portfolio also launched its first Mentorship Masterclass tackling this very issue facilitated by Drs. Umberin Najeeb and Arno Kumagai on June 6.

In today’s column, we share key pearls and the riveting conclusion, as well as launch a two new mentorship resources for mentors: “SHIELD” (5 ways to support your mentee from an underrepresented group) and “STAND” (5 ways to support your mentee who has experienced mistreatment).

So what happened? Catherine shared her experience with her division head and a senior colleague within the division, who gave her the option to bring this forward to the individual via their divisional leadership. At the time, Catherine elected to only move forward with updating a clinic policy regarding appropriateness of consultations for different patient populations.  A couple years later, after attending a Humanism in Medicine workshop, she decided to debrief with the resident who had witnessed the event, and reviewed what had transpired, and what other potential avenues of action could have been.

Finishing off with Catherine’s narrative, what are some concrete actions that you, as a mentor, can do to support your mentee in a similar situation?