Goals
- Facilitate impactful, individualized mentorship based on the needs of junior faculty
- Foster authentic and meaningful professional development
Mentorship is critical in academic medicine for scholarly work, retention, job satisfaction, and career advancement. Establishing effective, longitudinal mentorship can be challenging—new faculty usually lack a network of more experienced faculty who are ideally suited to serve as mentors; pre-assigned mentorship relationships are rarely durable or effective.
"This was a wonderful way to reflect on personal goals and identify future needs" - Junior faculty member
Mentoring Champions
D
r. Neha Deshpande launched the faculty Mentoring Program with the UWMC Hospital Medicine Group in 2019. The program leverages the robust colleague networks and institutional knowledge of mid-career faculty “Mentoring Champions.”
Mentoring Champions are trained to elicit junior faculty professional goals through the exploration of career and personal histories, authenticity and meaning, and specific professional interests.
Through the program, junior faculty are paired with a Mentoring Champion based at their clinical site. Mentoring Champions meet individually with junior faculty to assess their needs and aspirations, refer them to senior faculty with the goal of establishing longitudinal mentoring relationships, and follow up on the success of the connection.
The Mentoring Program partners with other Division of General Internal Medicine programs: Faculty Development Program (FDP) and Academic Research Coach (ARC).
The program is currently expanding to include more faculty throughout the Division.
"[My Mentoring Champion] was so insightful and resourceful, and I am so happy to have her help with this process!" - Junior faculty member
Scholarship on Mentorship
The Mentoring Program works to understand how to better serve the mentorship needs of faculty and pilots innovations in mentorship. The Project-Based Mentorship initiative utilized a book project, paired faculty and guidance on mentorship to work to create mentorship relationships. The program’s use of an authenticity-based model to connect faculty with potential mentees is reported here.
CONTACT
The Mentoring Program is directed Neha Deshpande, MD. Please contact her with any questions.