A systematic approach for establishing a competency-based mentorship program for academic physicians -

Abstract

Developing academic physicians is one of the challenging goals for academic healthcare centers and physicians, especially in the absence of mentoring program and institutional support. Research findings reported that medical doctors who choose a career in academic medicine face challenges in fulfilling their new roles, mainly because they were trained on how to treat patients, but not on how to fulfill academic roles in teaching and research. The findings of this research illuminated the importance of defining a competency model for academic physicians, and suggested stratifying the activities into supporting activities and function-specific ones. It is proposed to establish a value chain model for a mentoring academy for academic physicians “MAAP”, as a business model targeting to develop the essential knowledge, skills and behaviors for academic physicians to fulfill their roles successfully; it also aims to provide the institution with return on its investment in such a program. For successful implementation of “MAAP”, it is suggested to: 1) provide institutional resources, protected time and funding (Milner et al., 2011); 2) have the commitment of the leadership through direct participation and involvement in the program; 3) have the willingness and acceptance of junior academic physicians to join this program (Milner); 4) have the tools and ability to measure the program outcomes, through career progression of junior academic physicians, patients’ satisfaction, research productivity measured through quantitative and qualitative indicators; and finally, 5) holding junior academic physicians accountable for fulfilling the requirements of the program. Following are the prospective incentives for junior academic physicians to join the suggested mentoring academy: 1) integrating the program with an academic degree; 2) full sponsoring of this program by the institution; 3) link the outcomes of the program to professional development and career advancement.