Educational roles as a continuum of mentoring’s role in medicine – A systematic review and thematic analysis of educational studies from 2000 to 2018

Abstract

Introduction: Recent studies have gone to great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact be part of the mentoring process. To evaluate this theory, this review scrutinizes current literature on teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision to evaluate their commonalities with prevailing concepts of novice mentoring. Methods: A three staged approach is adopted to evaluate this premise. Stage one involves four systematic reviews on one-to-one learning interactions in teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision within Internal Medicine, published between 1st January 2000 and 31st December 2018. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach to thematic analysis was used to identify key elements within these approaches and facilitate comparisons between them. Stage two provides an updated view of one-to-one mentoring between a senior physician and a medical student or junior doctor to contextualise the discussion. Stage three infuses mentoring into the findings delineated in stage one. Results: 17499 citations were reviewed, 235 full-text articles were reviewed, and 104 articles were thematically analysed. Four themes were identified – characteristics, processes, nature of relationship, and problems faced in each of the four educational roles. Discussion: Role modelling, teaching and tutoring, coaching and supervision lie within a mentoring spectrum of increasingly structured interactions, assisted by assessments, feedback and personalised support that culminate with a mentoring approach. Still requiring validation, these findings necessitate a reconceptualization of mentoring and changes to mentor training programs and how mentoring is assessed and supported.

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“…This view is reinforced by Alkhawaldeh (2017) who defined mentoring as one-on-one relationship in which an expert or a senior person who is the mentor voluntarily gives time to teach, support, and encourage the trainee teacher. Many authors have suggested various roles of mentors in teaching practice such as fostering pre-service teacher's personal and professional development, and providing support, direction and feedback regarding career plans (Hudson 2017;Krishna et al 2019). However, Maphosa and Ndamba (2012) and Shumba et al (2016), writing from a Zimbabwean context, stated that the role of mentors entails counseling, coaching, guiding, disciplining and advising trainee teachers on pedagogical issues.…”

The Pivotal Role of Host Organizations in Enhancing Mentoring in Internal Medicine: A Scoping Review

“…[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] This suggests that peer, near-peer, group, mosaic, network, leadership, patient, youth, family, and e-mentoring should not be mistakenly conflated nor intermixed with preceptorship, supervision, role modeling, and networking which have their own specific approach and role in education and training. 41 Acknowledging mentoring's context specific nature, this review will focus on the role of the host in novice mentoring which is defined as the "dynamic, A systematic scoping review was adopted to identify "the central sources and forms of evidence available" on host organzations. 42 The flexible nature of a scoping review allows systematic extraction, synthesis, 43 and summarizing 44 of actionable and applicable information across a diverse range of study formats and settings.…”

“…42-49 This suggests that peer, near-peer, group, mosaic, network, leadership, patient, youth, family, and e-mentoring should not be mistakenly conflated nor intermixed with preceptorship, supervision, role modeling, and networking which have their own specific approach and role in education and training. 41 Acknowledging mentoring’s context specific nature, this review will focus on the role of the host in novice mentoring which is defined as the “ dynamic, context-dependent, goal-sensitive, mutually beneficial relationship between an experienced clinician and junior clinicians and/or undergraduates focused upon advancing the development of the mentee. ” 50 Novice mentoring is the dominant form of mentoring in medical education.…”

“…[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] With 2 recent reviews 30,31 attributing ethical issues such as bullying and misappropriation of the mentee's work to neglect on the part of the host, it is critical to scrutinize their role in mentoring programs. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]…”

Faculty Development/Mentoring Evolution of Mentorship in Academic Medicine

“…However, one has to be careful not to merge these practices with mentoring as that could be a source of confusion in conceptualizing mentoring. In this context, mentoring is defined as a ‘dynamic, context dependent, goal sensitive, mutually beneficial relationship between an experienced clinician or basic scientist and junior clinicians and or undergraduates that is focused on advancing the development of the mentee’ 8…”