Embrace of a consistent mentoring approach to ensure effective oversight of the mentoring process must be balanced with sufficient flexibility to ensure a mentee-centered approach. Efforts must be made to optimize the key aspects of mentoring relationships in order to ensure successful mentoring processes and outcomes.

A consistent mentoring approach is key to unlocking the full benefits of mentoring, ensuring effective oversight of mentoring relationships and preventing abuse of mentoring. Yet consistency in mentoring between senior clinicians and medical students (novice mentoring) which dominate mentoring processes in medical schools is difficult to achieve particularly when mentors practice in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical schools. To facilitate a consistent approach to mentoring this review scrutinizes common aspects of mentoring in undergraduate and postgraduate medical schools to forward a framework for novice mentoring in medical schools. Four authors preformed independent literature searches of novice mentoring guidelines and programmes in undergraduate and postgraduate medical schools using ERIC, PubMed, CINAHL, OVID and Science Direct databases. 25,605 abstracts were retrieved, 162 full-text articles were reviewed and 34 articles were included. The 4 themes were identified-preparation, initiating and supporting the mentoring process and the obstacles to effective mentoring. These themes highlight 2 key elements of an effective mentoring framework-flexibility and structure. Flexibility refers to meeting the individual and changing needs of mentees. Structure concerns ensuring consistency to the mentoring process and compliance with prevailing codes of conduct and standards of practice.

Effective mentoring enhances the personal and professional development of mentees and mentors, boosts the reputation of host organizations and improves patient outcomes. Much of this success hinges upon the mentor’s ability to nurture personalized mentoring relationships and mentoring environments, provide effective feedback and render timely, responsive, appropriate, and personalized support. However, mentors are often untrained raising concerns about the quality and oversight of mentoring support.To promote effective and consistent use of mentor training in medical education, this scoping review asks what mentor training programs are available in undergraduate and postgraduate medicine and how they may inform the creation of an evidenced-based framework for mentor training.Six reviewers adopted Arksey and O’Malley’s approach to scoping reviews to study prevailing mentor-training programs and guidelines in postgraduate education programs and in medical schools. The focus was on novice mentoring approaches. Six reviewers carried out independent searches with similar inclusion/exclusion criteria using PubMed, ERIC, EMBASE, SCOPUS, Google Scholar, and grey literature databases. Included were theses and book chapters published in English or had English translations published between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 2017. Braun and Clarke’s approach to thematic analysis was adopted to circumnavigate mentoring’s and mentor training’s evolving, context-specific, goal-sensitive, learner-, tutor- and relationally dependent nature that prevents simple comparisons of mentor training across different settings and mentee and mentor populations.In total, 3585 abstracts were retrieved, 232 full-text articles were reviewed, 68 articles were included and four themes were identified including the structure, content, outcomes and evaluation of mentor training program.The themes identified provide the basis for an evidence-based, practice-guided framework for a longitudinal mentor training program in medicine and identifies the essential topics to be covered in mentor training programs.

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BackgroundMentoring has been shown to improve resilience, sense of well-being, reduce staff turnover and to render psycho-emotional support in clinical medicine in general. Palliative care physicians face burnout, compassion fatigue and death anxiety. Whilst existing literature describes the benefit of formal mentoring programs and it's short to medium term goals, there is a lack of data describing the relational aspects of mentoring and its long term goals in shaping a physician. ObjectivesWe aim to explore the perspectives of mentors and mentees featured in editorials, perspective and opinion pieces to lend a glimpse into the long term impact, the relational and personal aspects of mentoring.

Background Mentoring's success in enhancing a mentee's professional and personal development, and a host organisations' reputation has been called into question, amidst a lack of effective tools to evaluate mentoring relationships and guide oversight of mentoring programs. A scoping review is proposed to map available literature on mentoring assessment tools in Internal Medicine to guide design of new tools. Objective The review aims to explore how novice mentoring is assessed in Internal Medicine, including the domains assessed, and the strengths and limitations of the assessment methods. Methods Guided by Levac et al.'s framework for scoping reviews, 12 reviewers conducted independent literature reviews of assessment tools in novice mentoring in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, ERIC, Cochrane, GreyLit, Web of Science, Open Dissertations and British Education Index databases. A 'split approach' saw research members adopting either Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis or directed content analysis to independently evaluate the data and improve validity and objectivity of the findings.

Background Mentoring nurtures a mentee’s personal and professional development. Yet conflation of mentoring approaches and a failure to contend with mentoring’s nature makes it difficult to study mentoring processes and relationships. This study aims to understand of mentee experiences in the Palliative Medicine Initiative (PMI). The PMI uses a consistent mentoring approach amongst a homogeneous mentee population offers a unique opportunity to circumnavigate conflation of practices and the limitations posed by mentoring’s nature. The data will advance understanding of mentoring processes. Methods Sixteen mentees discussed their PMI experiences in individual face-to-face audio-recorded interviews. The two themes identified from thematic analysis of interview transcripts were the stages of mentoring and communication. Results The 6 stages of mentoring are the ‘pre-mentoring stage’, ‘initial research meetings’, ‘data gathering’, ‘review of initial findings, ‘manuscript preparation” and ‘reflections’. These subthemes sketch the progression of mentees from being dependent on the mentor for support and guidance, to an independent learner with capacity and willingness to mentor others. Each subtheme is described as stages in the mentoring process (mentoring stages) given their association with a specific phase of the research process. Mentoring processes also pivot on effective communication which are influenced by the mentor’s characteristics and the nature of mentoring interactions. Conclusion Mentoring relationships evolve in stages to ensure particular competencies are met before mentees progress to the next part of their mentoring process. Progress is dependent upon effective communication and support from the mentor and appropriate and timely adaptations to the mentoring approach to meet the mentee’s needs and goals. Adaptations to the mentoring structure are informed by effective and holistic evaluation of the mentoring process and the mentor’s and mentee’s abilities, goals and situations. These findings underline the need to review and redesign the way assessments of the mentoring process are constructed and how mentoring programs are structured.

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