A. D. Caine1, A. Kunac1 1University Of Medicine And Dentistry Of New Jersey,General Surgery,Newark, NJ, USA
Introduction: Mentoring has been established as a useful adjunct to resident support systems. Although not as extensively studied as attending-resident mentoring, resident-resident mentoring offers additional benefits. Previous works have shown that the quality of the mentorship pairing is important but techniques of pairing have seldom been described. Herein we describe a system for mentor-mentee pairing that we call “Speed Dating for Mentors” (SDM).
Methods: The SDM activity took place in an academic general surgery residency program in the Northeast consisting of 29 PGY 1-2 junior residents (JR) and 28 PGY 3-5+ senior residents (SR). SDM took place during academic protected time. JR were seated in our lecture auditorium while SR went in consecutive fashion from resident to resident in 90 second intervals. Upon completion of all interviews both JR and SR documented their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices for mentors or mentees as well as rationale for their choices—this was used to create senior-junior resident pairings. A cross sectional written survey with Likert-type responses was conducted with univariate analysis of satisfaction with the SDM event and factors important to residents in choosing a mentor.
Results: Forty-one surgical residents participated in SDM—23 junior residents participated and 19 senior residents participated resulting in 23 mentor-mentee pairings. Fourteen pairs were generated where both mentor and mentee were among top 3 choices, 7 pairings generated where either the mentor or mentee were a top 3 choice, and 2 pairings from the SDM session were assigned. The remaining 6 pairs were assigned for non-attendees. The most common rationale cited was “similar interests.” A total of 36 surveys were completed—28 (78%) of respondents participated in SDM compared to 8 (22%) who did not. Of attendees, 82% of respondents were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the event. Eighty-five percent of respondents who attended were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their pairing compared to only 12% of non-attendees. Sixty-two percent of non-attendees were “neutral,” “dissatisfied” or “extremely dissatisfied” with their pairing and 2 non-attendees declined to answer. Race/ethnicity and gender were not found to be important and 86% of respondents thought having protected time for mentoring to be important.
Conclusion: “Speed Dating” is a novel approach to pairing surgical residents for the purpose of mentorship and allowed residents to identify potential mentors/mentees with similar interests. Residents who attended the event were satisfied with the event and with the outcome of their mentor/mentee pairing; SDM may also be a useful tool for faculty-resident mentorship pairings. Further investigations are warranted to determine what effects resident mentoring has on resident performance, stress levels, and morale.