270 - What Constitutes Successful Mentorship? Evidence of Greater Relational Importance Among Women and Junior Faculty

Publication Number: 1256.270

R Thomas. Collins, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, United States; Sharon F. Chen, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Stephen J. Roth, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States

Background: Receiving mentorship is associated with numerous career benefits for academic physicians. Anecdotal experience from multiple centers suggests junior physician faculty are engaging less in receiving mentorship. This could have significant negative impacts on academic pediatric physicians.

Objective: We sought to determine how misalignment of expectation on the prime purpose of mentoring could contribute to decreased mentorship engagement by junior physician faculty.

Design/Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews of pediatric physician faculty at two medical schools (one public and one private) identified purposively and split evenly between assistant and full professors. We used inductive content analysis to identify themes and codes regarding mentee and mentor expectations, specifically regarding responses to a question of which was more important between the mentee’s academic success or feeling cared about personally.

Results: Forty subjects participated in the study (50% female, 50% full professors). Participant responses segregated into three groups: relationship primacy, academic success primacy, or equivalence. One-third of senior faculty mentors endorsed academic success as the purpose of mentoring, only one of whom was female. Those mentors insisted that “making [mentees academically] successful […] is the goal of a mentor,” and the idea that a personal relationship should play a part was seen as “kind of crazy,” “because if they want a friend, they can buy a dog.” Conversely, the plurality of respondents endorsed a personal relationship as more important. No junior faculty mentees supported academic success as the more important outcome, saying when a mentor cares for them, they “will automatically excel.” More women endorsed the primacy of relationship, whereas equivalency between the two was balanced between genders. Junior faculty who endorsed equivalency saw it as “all one thing. It’s not exclusive; it’s mutually inclusive.” When there was discrepancy between the mentee and mentor values for the relationship, some junior faculty would “stop pursuing being mentored.”

Conclusion(s): Junior faculty of both genders and senior female faculty prioritize a personal relationship as the defining element of successful mentorship, while many senior male faculty adopt a more transactional view. These misaligned expectations create gender and generational gaps that undermine mentee engagement. Targeted mentor training could better align priorities and strengthen mentorship success across the faculty.