Mentoring Resources

Making the Most Out of Mentorship

Developed by Richard Brach, a Larner medical student, this guide offers practical advice for building a successful mentoring relationship. It encourages students to be proactive, clarify their goals, and use mentorship to explore career interests, academic success, research opportunities, and personal well-being. The guide also provides conversation starters, strategies for effective mentor engagement, and encouragement for navigating common challenges such as impostor syndrome.

Physician Mentorship: Why It’s Important and How to Find and Sustain Relationships

Most physicians who make their way into satisfying careers — and especially those who also end up in leadership roles — are usually quick to point out to their younger colleagues that they received some help, perhaps even a whole lot of assistance, along the way. Almost invariably, these physician success stories usually have a common thread: an important mentor, or possibly more than one key mentor, whose guidance proved invaluable.

The Meaning and Significance of Mentorship: A Two-Way Street

The pursuit of a career in medicine is inevitably characterized by successes, challenges, and questions every step of the way. It is invaluable for trainees to have a point of contact to help guide them through challenges and share in the excitement of their successes. The Canadian Medical Association defines mentorship as “a relationship in which a more experienced professional (the mentor) helps someone newer to the field (the mentee) grow both personally and professionally.” Mentorship is widely recognized as an important component of medical training and is beneficial for both the mentee and the mentor.

My Black Mind is Not Yours—The Minority Trap During Interviews & How to Avoid It

Chase Anderson, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the biases that the medical community continues to impose on medical students & doctors of color, and shares his experiences navigating the residency interview cycle as a person underrepresented in medicine.

Facilitating Effective Training Along the Medical Education Continuum

The AMA’s Facilitating Effective Transitions Along the Medical Education Continuum handbook takes a deep dive into the needs of learners along the continuum of medical education—from the beginning of medical school through the final stage of residency. Divided into complementary learner and faculty sections, this new coaching guide offers critical guidance for navigating each stage of training. The learner sections guide students and residents in acclimating to the various settings and expectations along the spectrum of the medical training environment. In the faculty sections, education leaders will find a blueprint for transition programming and resources to help learners navigate challenges in transitions.

Mentorship in Academic Medicine

Mentorship in Academic Medicine is an evidence-based guide for establishing and maintaining successful mentoring relationships for both mentors and mentees. Drawing upon the existing evidence-base on academic mentoring in medicine and the health sciences, it applies a case-stimulus learning approach to the common challenges and opportunities in mentorship in academic medicine

Mentoring and Diversity: Tips for Students and Professionals for Developing and Maintaining a Diverse Scientific Community

Mentoring has always been an important factor in life and particularly in academia. In fact, making choices about educational pursuits and subsequent careers without input from mentors can prove disastrous. Although the tips in this monograph are designed for helping all individuals who are interested in pursuing the study of science and science careers, a special mentoring focus is on those students who have not experienced the advantages of the privileged class. Additionally, tips are included for those who are interested in effectively mentoring these individuals.

Getting the Most out of your Mentoring Relationships: A Handbook for Women in STEM

This book aims to be a reflective guide to women seeking mentoring relationships (e.g., protégés) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers. This book primarily addresses mentoring needs at various career milestones and provides many stories and quotes from women scientists at different stages of their career.

The Mentee's Guide: Making Mentoring Work for You

This volume offers a companion guide to the best-selling book The Mentor's Guide. This practical book offers ideas and suggestions for making the most of a mentoring opportunity for the person being mentored. It shows how to prepare for, sustain, and bring to closure the important mentor/mentee relationship. The author guides mentees through the four phases of the mentoring process and outlines the SMART method (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and timely). The book offers valuable advice for any mentee whether in the nonprofit, corporate, or government sector.

Changing the Approach in Supporting and Advancing Underrepresented in Medicine (UIM) Medical Students

Research has shown the importance of diversity in improving patient care. Medical students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine (UIM) face unique challenges, including minority tax, stereotype threat, and expectations to be the sole representative of their identity group. Mentors must be aware of these challenges and develop skills to address them.

Assessing the Role of Mentors in Mitigating Burnout & Enhancing Professional Development in Medical Education

Mentoring in medical education helps students meet professional standards by providing constructive feedback and serving as role models. This benefits both mentees and mentors, promoting their development and enhancing leadership and teaching skills. This study explores the link between volunteer mentors' behaviors, as perceived by medical students, and their impact on students' experiences, including burnout and professional identity formation.

Medical Student Mentoring Guide

In medical education, mentoring fosters professional identity, professionalism, research involvement, career planning, and overall student well-being, particularly benefiting those underrepresented in medicine. This resource is designed for faculty mentoring medical students, offering tools and a framework for mentor-mentee interactions.

What Do Medical Students Want From a Mentor?

While the medical education literature lacks a standard definition of mentoring, the diverse goals and development of medical students demand personalized, flexible mentoring approaches. Key roles include coach, advisor, teacher, counselor, and sponsor. These relationships are grounded in mutual trust and enhance the mentee's psychosocial and career development. Mentees appreciate mentoring relationships for their positive influence on career planning and research, viewing mentors as counselors, idea providers, and role models.

Peer Mentorship & First-Year Inclusion: Building Belonging In Higher Education

An inclusive academic environment is crucial for student well-being and fostering a sense of belonging. Peer mentoring is an effective strategy to enhance inclusion, leading to improved retention and academic success. Mentors can guide mentees on diversity and inclusion topics like unconscious bias, self-awareness, and micro-aggressions. Through both formal and informal interactions, students and mentors build relationships that extend beyond career guidance and technical training, enhancing students’ well-being and sense of inclusion.

Assessing the Effects of a Mentoring Program on Professional Identity Formation

Medical education has had varied success in fostering professional identity formation among students. Recent data indicates that structured mentoring programs can consistently promote this development. A uniform mentoring approach, alongside personalized, longitudinal support and structured assessments, is crucial for effective mentoring. The focus should now shift to creating assessment tools, like a KPM-based tool, to enhance support and oversight of mentoring relationships.

Mentorship of US Medical Students: A Systematic Review

Mentoring of medical students remains a core pillar of medical education, yet the changing landscape of medicine has called for new and innovative mentoring models to guide students in professional development, career placement, and overall student well-being. This review identifies & describes models of mentorship for US medical students. 

Factors Influencing Underrepresented Medical Students’ Career Choice in Surgical Subspecialities

Surgical subspecialties rank among the least racially and gender diverse of the medical specialties. This systematic review evaluates factors that influence female, gender and sexual minority (GSM), and underrepresented in medicine (URiM)-identifying medical students' decision to pursue a career in a surgical subspecialty. In an effort to understand why these inequities exist and identify areas for improvement, there is a growing body of literature aimed at understanding why medical students are encouraged or discouraged from pursuing a career in surgery.

“Value My Culture, Value Me”: A Case for Culturally Relevant Mentoring in Medical Education & Academic Medicine

Mentoring programs are one mechanism used to increase diversity and participation of historically underrepresented groups in academic medicine. However, more knowledge is needed about the mentoring experiences and how culturally relevant concepts and perspectives may influence diverse students, trainees, and faculty success. The use of cultural relevance indicators can inform the creation and evolution of mentoring programs towards holistic support of historically underrepresented trainees and faculty. Implications also focus on the development of mentors and championing the incorporation of cultural humility in the mentoring process. 

The Importance of Mentors & How to Handle More than One Mentor

Working with multiple mentors is a critical way for students to expand their network, gain opportunities, and better prepare for future scholastic or professional ventures. However, students from underrepresented groups (UR) are less likely to be mentored or have access to mentors, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Having multiple mentors at each training stage is critical for student success. Many students are knowledgeable of the mentee-to-mentor relationship; however, students often lack a deeper understanding of how to best foster this relationship for ultimate academic achievement.

What Makes Mentors Thrive? An Exploratory Study of their Satisfaction in Undergraduate Medical Education

Mentoring medical students with varied backgrounds and individual needs can be challenging. Mentors’ satisfaction is likely to be important for the quality and sustainability of mentorships, especially in programs where the mentor has responsibility for facilitating a group of mentees. Our findings suggest that mentors’ overall satisfaction is closely linked to their experiences of fulfilling mentor-student relationships and personal and professional development. Mentors’ satisfaction may be decisive for the pedagogical quality and the sustainability of group mentorship programs in medical education. 

Mentoring Future Mentors in Undergraduate Medical Education

Efforts to support mentoring programs facing shortages of experienced clinical mentors have yielded an unexpected benefit. Introducing peer mentoring has not only filled gaps in practice, structure, support, and oversight but has also allowed mentees in peer-mentoring roles to gain experience under senior supervision. This study assesses the experiences of peer mentors within a local research mentoring program to enhance this initiative.

Making the Most of Mentors: A Guide for Mentees

Effective mentorship is likely one of the most important determinants of success in academic medicine and research. Many papers focus on mentoring from the mentor’s perspective, but few give guidance to mentees forging these critically important relationships. The authors apply “managing up,” a corporate concept, to academic medical settings both to promote effective, successful mentoring and to make a mentor’s job easier. Managing up requires the mentee to take responsibility for his or her part in the collaborative alliance and to be the leader of the relationship by guiding and facilitating the mentor’s efforts to create a satisfying and productive relationship for both parties. The authors review the initiation and cultivation of a mentoring relationship from the perspective of a mentee at any stage (student through junior faculty), and they propose specific strategies for mentee success. 

Impact of Mentoring on Academic Career Success for Women in Medicine: A Systematic Review

Research has shown that barriers to career success in academic medicine disproportionately affect women. These barriers include inadequate mentoring, which may perpetuate the underrepresentation of women in senior leadership positions. The purpose of this review was to summarize the qualitative and quantitative evidence of the impact of mentoring on women’s career outcomes and to inform future interventions to support the promotion and retention of women in academic medicine. 

Carving a Path to Leadership: Strategies & Interventions

Leadership is most effective when it reflects the community that it serves. The efficacy, innovation, and outcomes of academic medicine are severely limited where there is a lack of women in leadership, and particularly women of color. Gleaning insights from current chairs and deans, as well as covering the data on WOC in leadership, this webinar will kick-start real dialogue about our current approaches and needed changes to make changes in the leadership of academic medicine. 

The Nocturnists

The Nocturnists is an award-winning medical storytelling podcast, hosted by physician Emily Silverman. It feature personal stories from frontline clinicians, conversations with healthcare-related authors and art-makers, and special podcast documentary series. 

Academic Medicine Podcast

Meet medical students and residents, clinicians and educators, health care thought leaders and researchers in this podcast from the journal Academic Medicine. Episodes chronicle the stories of these individuals as they experience the science and the art of medicine. Guests delve deeper into the issues shaping medical schools and teaching hospitals today. Transcripts available at academicmedicineblog.org. 

The Curbsiders 

The Curbsiders is an Internal Medicine Podcast featuring board-certified Internists as they interview (“curbside”) the experts to provide listeners with clinical pearls, practice-changing knowledge, and bad puns. No boring lectures here, just the stuff you wish they’d taught in medical school and residency.

The Medicine Mentors

This project interviews top physician performers to uncover the secrets behind their success. What key principles led them to their goals? What sets them apart? What critical decisions shaped their destinies? Medical School and Residency provide a unique opportunity to learn, pass boards, and lay a foundation for our professional and personal lives for the next 50 years.

AMSA ad lib

AMSA ad lib is the American Medical Student Association's podcast, bringing together the intimate perspectives of medical students and experts on topics ranging from specialty selection and personal finance to technological developments in medicine's near future.

Tools & Resources for First-Generation Medical Students

“As a medical student, you are joining a professional culture where relationships formed with supervisors can be very important for career mentorship and letters of recommendation. How do you dress in the professional environment? What is expected of you in the clinic and in the hospital?  Are you fully oriented to be successful? The resources in this online toolkit may be useful for students, medical school professionals, and families of students who seek to support, guide, and advocate for first-generation students as they navigate through medical training.”

Tools & Resources for Advisors of First-Generation Medical Students

“Medical students who are the first in their families to graduate from college bring unique strengths to medical school. These first-generation college graduates, and others who come from backgrounds with limited exposure to medicine, may also have unique needs and face challenges that are not always readily recognized by their schools.”

Cultural Resource Guide

This UVM Cultural Resource Guide is for those living or considering living in the Burlington area and who want to learn more about the diverse resources available. We believe this is a vital resource for prospective and current faculty, staff, and students from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and/or identities. Although this resource is not exhaustive, we hope it gives you a better sense of the diversity of resources available to you in the area.