Mentoring new colleagues as they make the transition from practice to clinical teaching has long been a feature of clinical programs, but mentoring relationships have generally been informal and often transitory. Clinical scholarship, while rich in discussions of the relationship between clinical teachers and clinical students, has had much less to say about the relationship between experienced teachers and junior clinical colleagues. The parallels between mentoring new clinical teachers and supervising clinical students suggest that both that mentoring is likely to be a meaningful way to promote the professional development of clinical educations and that mentoring in this context is likely to profit from the same critical attention to methodology that has characterized our thinking about supervision of clinical students.
This session will draw on the mentoring literature from other disciplines and the experiences of clinical educators both as mentors and mentees to explore questions such as:
-- Should there be an expectation of a formal relationship between a mentor and a new clinician?
-- Who sets the goals and agenda for a mentoring relationship? What if the goals of the institution and the mentee differ?
-- What models are available to guide mentors? Should mentors be trained?
-- What structure would be required to formalize a mentoring program?