The Development, Implementation, and Assessment of an Innovative Faculty Mentoring Leadership Program

Abstract

Effective mentoring is an important component of academic success. Few programs exist to both improve the effectiveness of established mentors and cultivate a multi-specialty mentoring community. In 2008, in response to a faculty survey on mentoring, leaders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed the Faculty Mentoring Leadership Program (FMLP) as a peer-learning experience for mid-career and senior faculty physician and scientist mentors to enhance their skills and leadership in mentoring and create a supportive community of mentors. A planning group representing key administrative, educational, clinical, and research mentorship constituencies designed the nine-month course. Participants met monthly for an hour and a half during lunchtime. Two co-facilitators engaged the diverse group of 16 participants in interactive discussions about cases based on the participants’ experiences. While the co-facilitators discussed with the participants the dyadic mentor-mentee relationship, they specifically emphasized the value of engaging multiple mentors and establishing mentoring networks. In response to post-session and post-course (both immediately and after six months) self-assessments, participants reported substantive gains in their mentoring confidence and effectiveness, experienced a renewed sense of enthusiasm for mentoring, and took initial steps to build a diverse network of mentoring relationships. In this article, the authors describe the rationale, design, implementation, assessment, and ongoing impact of this innovative faculty mentoring leadership program. They also share lessons learned for other institutions that are contemplating developing a similar faculty mentoring program.

The Pediatric Heart Network Scholar Award programme: a unique mentored award embedded within a multicentre network

“…Requirements for the position included a clear interest in serving, guaranteed time commitment to fulfil the duties of the committee, and agreement to serve as the point person for communication of all requirements and aspects of the award at their centre. 16 The nine core centre representatives included three assistant professors, three associate professors, and three professors who also served as the selection panel for the award. The equal distribution in rank allowed input on the process and review across the spectrum of junior to senior investigators.…”

How to Effectively Mentor Junior Faculty?

“…Giving and receiving positive feedback is much easier than negative feedback-even when meant to be helpful. 9,10 In addition, to be effective, feedback must be provided in a timely fashion along with an organized process to monitor progress.…”

Development and Validation of the Foundational Healthcare Leadership Self-assessment

“…[25][26][27][28][29][30] Validated assessment is needed to demonstrate impact and compare curriculum. 9,14,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] A systematic review of leadership training in health care teams found that defining best practices is difficult due to lack of a standard definition of leadership, supporting frameworks, and robust assessments. 35 Though assessments do exist for health care administrators, practicing physicians, and surgeons' nontechnical skills in the operating room (including leadership), there are no published assessment instruments of leadership skills for physicians in residency training programs.…”