Abstract Manager

Education Innovation

Existing literature demonstrates benefits of mentoring as key to professional integration. Evidence highlights high levels of mentee satisfaction including: increased job satisfaction, professional development and sense of well-being, confidence and clinical knowledge, and increased research productivity.

Purpose: Provide a learner centered formal mentoring program in an academic medicine setting for the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Medicine (UBC FoM) clinical faculty (primarily clinicians who also do some teaching, research and/or administrative leadership), that enhances connection to the university, supports engagement and recognition, increases capacity for administrative, research and teaching roles, increases confidence in effective student supervision, and supports career goals by providing a formal mentoring program. Methods: In the fall of 2017, an eight month formal Clinical Faculty Mentoring Program was initiated for twenty physician and physiotherapist clinical faculty who were local and distributed throughout the province. Mentors and mentees completed program evaluation surveys (pre/mid/post) where they reflected on engagement with the academic environment as clinical faculty and on their experiences as participants in the program. Results: Evaluation data from the ten mentoring pairs indicated a sound mentoring prototype was developed that supports clinical faculty. Results show that 1) pilot participants are developing and enhancing their confidence in leadership skills leading to better student placements; 2) health professionals are learning together creating an opportunity for meaningful feedback loops and quality improvement in an interdisciplinary environment; and 3) participants have increased access to education which is positively impacting practitioner resilience, recruitment and retention as well as supporting effective practitioner training.

Supporting distributed clinical faculty through a formal mentoring program fosters strong relationships, connection to the Faculty of Medicine and the University and promotes continuous quality improvement in the workplace. Programs like this present an opportunity to recognize the contribution and value of clinical faculty, which is especially important for health professionals who are not compensated financially for clinical teaching.