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Commentary
May 16, 2007

Academic Mentoring—How to Give It and How to Get It

Author Affiliations
 

Author Affiliations: Departments of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation and Medicine, University of Toronto, Departments of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital and University Health Network (Dr Detsky); Department of Medical Imaging, University of Toronto (Dr Baerlocher), Toronto, Ontario.

JAMA. 2007;297(19):2134-2136. doi:10.1001/jama.297.19.2134

Students, trainees, research fellows, and junior faculty all benefit from the direction provided by academic mentors and research supervisors. The literature contains numerous reports on the importance of mentorship in helping facilitate the future success of trainees, documenting benefits such as more productive research careers, greater career satisfaction, better preparation in making career decisions, networking within a profession, and aiding in stress management.1-10 This Commentary describes several key points of advice both for individuals who mentor and those who receive mentoring (mentees). In some places, a mentor is an individual who is not the student's direct clinical, academic, or research supervisor. This advice applies to those kinds of mentors as well as the more traditional direct supervisors.

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