Exploring Mentorship as a Strategy to Build Capacity and Optimize the Embedded Scientist Workforce

Abstract

Background: Mentorship plays a significant role in career development in academic and applied settings, but little is documented about its role in the experiential learning of academic trainees embedded in health system organizations. The experiences of the first cohort of Canada' s Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship program can provide insights into how mentorship in this innovative type of training can work. Objectives: To understand the mentorship strategies that were used and to explore fellows' and supervisors' perspectives and experiences on the effectiveness and value of those strategies. Methods: Data from the surveys of fellows and their supervisors and a panel rooted in the lived experience of the first HSI Fellowship cohort were used. Results: Health system and academic supervisors developed a range of innovative, individualized and effective approaches for guiding their fellows, such as providing the fellow with a committee of mentors within the organization, holding regular meetings with the fellow and both the health system and the academic supervisor and leveraging their own network to expand the network and resources available to the fellow. Conclusion: The results suggest that engaging senior leadership in health system settings has provided positive experiences for both fellows and their mentors. *36% of host partners participated in Round 1. **15% also supervised a fellow in Round 1.

Training for Health System Improvement: Emerging Lessons from Canadian and US Approaches to Embedded Fellowships

“…DSSF host sites have had a similar experience, and, although not mandated by the program, some are now offering only two-year fellowships. Additional guidance to host sites regarding promising strategies for onboarding fellows and creating initial conditions for long-term success, to health system and academic supervisors regarding the importance of mentorship (Bornstein et al 2019;Hamelin and Paradis 2018;Sambunjak et al 2010) and to fellows regarding the policy-and decision-making process may accelerate acculturation.…”

“…So, to contribute to the currently limited evidence on impact-oriented HSPR training, it will be important to evaluate their impact at regular intervals, adjust their parameters for continued relevance to employment trends and health system needs and report on lessons learned. The papers in the present issue reflect initial efforts to learn from early experiences with the HSI Fellowship program, including whether and how fellows' enriched core competencies evolved over the course of the first year (see McMahon et al 2019a), what contributions fellows made to their host partner organizations (see Blanchette et al 2019) and the role and value of mentors in embedded research settings (see Bornstein et al 2019). Over time, as the Canadian and US programs expand and evolve, it will be important to investigate questions such as the following: Does hosting a fellow generate spillover effects for an organization' s internal culture of research and continuous learning?…”

“…The Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR) defines it as the field of scientific investigation that generates evidence on how to invest in programs, services and technologies that maximize health and health system outcomes ( CIHR-IHSPR 2016 ), and it is similarly defined by AcademyHealth and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the US ( Mor and Wallace 2018 ). Countries worldwide are grappling with rising expenditures, inefficient service delivery and suboptimal patient outcomes, and doctoral graduates in HSPR have the skills to tackle such challenges and the potential to make significant contributions to health system improvement ( Bornstein et al 2019 ; Brown and Nuti 2016 ; Tamblyn et al 2016b ). The contributions of doctorally trained health services and policy researchers can come through investigator-driven research in academic institutions and be published in peer-reviewed journals, as is typical in the basic sciences.…”

Training for Impact: PhD Modernization as a Key Resource for Learning Health Systems

“…Finally, Bornstein and colleagues (2019) examine the role and value of mentorship by health system leaders in the training and professional development of embedded fellows. They find that the fellows' health system supervisors developed a range of innovative, individualized and effective approaches for guiding their fellows.…”

Destination Impact! The Many Roads to Influencing Health System Change: A Response to Recent Commentaries

“…Embeddedness may increase the likelihood that this happens, but does not ensure it. Several innovative approaches that HSI Fellowship mentors are employing, not observed in other reports, include “providing the fellow with a committee of mentors within the organization, holding regular meetings with the fellow and both the health system and the academic supervisor, and leveraging their own network to expand the network and resources available to the fellow.” 12 This practice can only help to further develop the fellows’ experiential learning, the relationships with both academic and knowledge user audiences, and to support greater opportunity for impact.…”