From mentee to mentor

Mentoring is universally recognized as a key contributor to a successful career in academic medicine. Most of those who recently transitioned from fellow to faculty got to their current positions with the help of one or more mentors. While many will still need mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring, many are also eager to give back and wonder when and how to make that transition from mentee to mentor. In this article, we will share our journeys, one having made that transition more than three decades earlier, and another at the crossroad shared by our readers.

Dr. Lok: Senior Mentor’s Perspective

I (ASL) completed my hepatology fellowship training in London under Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock. I did not realize how fortunate I was until Dame Sheila’s retirement celebration (2 months before the end of my fellowship) when more than 200 former mentees flew in from all over the world to express their appreciation. Dame Sheila had always embraced all of us as part of the Sherlock family. I benefited tremendously not only from clinical and research training with Dame Sheila and her motherly love that continued well after I completed my fellowship but also the connections and support from my “siblings” who were the Who’s Who in Hepatology.

University of Michigan
Dr. Anna S. Lok

My transition from mentee to mentor occurred insidiously after my return to Hong Kong, coaching and collaborating with residents, fellows, and early career faculty in their research projects. A key tip I shared with them was the importance of establishing a robust database and sample repository — a vital element to success as a clinical investigator. Working in a busy clinical environment with no protected time and limited resources, we began by identifying clinical dilemmas that we faced in clinics each day and determined which ones were “solvable” if we dove deep. Through keen observations, protocolized clinical care, and robust data recording, we published in Gastroenterology one of the first prospective studies of hepatitis B reactivation in patients receiving chemotherapy, and it continues to be cited. Many principles in mentoring apply universally. Indeed, one of my most accomplished mentees in Hong Kong is a nephrologist with whom I continue to coauthor topics in UpToDate. This is an example of how mentee-mentor relationship can evolve and last, and how each can learn from the other to provide guidance on multi-disciplinary care of complex medical problems.

I became more involved in mentoring after I moved to the United States. I was first hired as Hepatology Program Director at Tulane University and then at the University of Michigan. These roles gave me a sense of responsibility not just to mentor one resident, fellow, or faculty on a research project but to have a holistic approach, providing the necessary guidance and support to help mentees make the best of their potentials and build successful careers, which in turn allows me to build a world-class program.

Over the years, I have mentored more than 60 trainees from all over the world, some of whom have now become division chiefs, department chairs, and chief medical officers of hospitals. Every mentor has a different style, and I had been criticized for being a “Tiger Mom.” I have mellowed over the years, and I hope I am no longer perceived as a “tiger,” though tough love is crucial in mentoring. I hope I am still considered a “mom,” because I see the role of a mentor as that of a parent, providing unconditional love and support with the only expectation that the mentees try to do their best to maximize their potentials and reach their goals. Mentoring is a time investment. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and heart-breaking. It is rarely recognized, and the time and effort rarely compensated. Thus, one should take on mentoring as a calling, a desire to pay it forward, and an understanding that problems can be solved only when generations of physicians and researchers continue to work on them.

A mentor, just like a parent, helps mentees recognize their potentials — passion, strengths, and weaknesses — and to set ambitious yet realistic goals. A very important role of a mentor is to help mentees determine their short- and long-term goals by guiding them to leverage their strengths and passion toward areas and niches that are important and attainable.

Each goal must be accompanied by a plan on how to get there based on resources available. Here is where tough love comes into play. Because there are so many distractions in life, mentees can veer off and be lost. Research projects (and life) never go exactly as planned, and it is difficult to keep going when projects hit a roadblock and papers and grants are rejected. A mentor must help mentees accept and learn from failures and persevere with renewed commitment or find an alternative path (when it is clear the original path is doomed). The most important role of the mentor is to continue to believe in the mentee. Project failure must not be equated to mentee failure though there are times when it is clear some mentees have their interests and talents in other areas. Helping mentees find an alternative path to success and fulfillment can be a blessing. Indeed, two of my mentees who were successful researchers during their early careers have now become successful chief medical officers of major hospitals. They are happy, and I am very proud of them. Times have changed, so my coauthor, who has been faculty for 3.5 years, will share his journey from mentee to mentor.

Dr. Chen: Early Mentor’s Perspective

I (VLC) completed training in 2020 and have mentored only people who are early in their careers, i.e., medical students, residents, and fellows. My transition from mentee to mentor was primarily motivated by gratitude to my past mentors. Watching my own former trainees move on to the next stages of their careers has been hugely fulfilling. It is important that mentee-mentor relationships are mutually beneficial, and I offer a few points to junior faculty considering taking on trainees as mentees.

Michigan Medicine
Dr. Vincent L. Chen

Taking on a mentee is a commitment. Take it seriously. While a mentee’s success is ultimately their responsibility, mentors are implicitly agreeing to give them opportunities commensurate to their skills and motivation. If you are not in a position to offer such opportunities, do not accept mentees.

Mentorship takes time. Explaining and reviewing research protocols, reading abstract or manuscript drafts, and meeting with mentees to plan for next steps take more time than one might expect.

Understand what potential mentees want. Most trainees are looking for help making it to the next stage of their career (college to medical school, residency to fellowship, etc.) and need abstracts and/or publications to get there. When I work with residents applying to GI fellowship, the goal is that by the time fellowship applications are submitted (early in third year of residency), they have at a minimum presented an abstract at Digestive Diseases Week (DDW) in their second year and submitted an abstract to the American College of Gastroenterology and/or American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases meetings in their third year. This requires planning to ensure they start working early enough to meet conference abstract deadlines. In my opinion, it is reasonable to give the trainee a less ambitious project or a piece of a larger project (i.e., middle authorship on a paper).

By contrast, for trainees who are seriously interested in a research career, the goal is not superfluous abstracts. Rather it is crucial to ensure that the trainee leads a meaningful project that will be a steppingstone to their future career and/or provide preliminary data to support grant applications. Similarly, training in research methodology should be more rigorous for these mentees.

Recognize the limitations of your circumstances. Early-stage faculty often operate on a shoestring budget and little protected time. Even those with 50% or more protected research time and excellent nursing support will find that the time they spend on patient care extends far beyond the time spent in endoscopy units and clinics. Time management and discipline — including not getting bogged down on low-impact research studies — are essential skills.

Be (slightly) selfish. Make sure that you get something out of the mentee as well. Ask yourself:

Do I have work they can help me with? Avoid creating projects simply to give a trainee something to do. It is much better to have them work on a project that you want to do anyway.

How do the trainee’s skills fit in with the type of work that I do? A trainee with no background in statistics may not be able to conduct analyses but may be able to do chart reviews.

Consider “testing” a potential mentee by assigning a limited, straightforward task. If the mentee completes this quickly and to a high standard, then move on to progressively more important or high-stakes projects.

Set concrete and realistic expectations, keeping in mind that trainees have other commitments such as classes and clinical rotations.

Serving as a mentor to the next generation of gastroenterologists is a privilege that junior faculty should not take lightly, and an opportunity for a symbiotic relationship.

Dr. Chen and Dr. Lok are with the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. They have no financial conflicts related to this article.