Tip: How to be a good mentor

Becoming a mentor is a commitment of time and energy that not many physicians are willing to make, particularly when their reimbursement models force them to fill every spare second with work. But for physicians who have had the pleasure of taking a budding grad under their wing, or for the struggling physician who has had the comfort of a rock to lean on, a mentoring relationship is invaluable.

To learn what it takes to be an effective mentor, Medical Staff Briefing spoke with R. Dean White, DDS, MS, a medical staff advisor and coach in Dallas-Fort Worth and author of Medical Staff Leadership Essentials and A Practical Guide to Managing Disruptive and Impaired Practitioners (both available at www.hcmarketplace.com) Here are three of the tips White offered for becoming an effective mentor:

1. Mentoring is not coaching

The biggest mistake rookie mentors make is approaching their mentees with a task-oriented attitude. Coaching is the task of teaching individual skills to individual people. "I have coached people on how to run effective meetings and how to have difficult conversations, but that wasn't mentoring. It was a one-time thing and we were focused on a particular task," says White.

Mentoring is making yourself available to help a mentee work through problems. It's being a sounding board and a guide. Mentors don't solve their mentee's problems, but rather draw on their own experiences to guide mentees to reasonable decisions.

Mentoring is a relationship that is entered into mutually. Although many hospitals have tried to develop mentoring programs, they seldom work because they typically assign mentors and mentees. There must be a connection between the two parties because the relationship that will ensue will affect both the mentor and the mentee emotionally.

"I had mentoring relationships with four or five people over the years, and it was tough. When they struggled, I felt that I had let them down," says White.

If you don't want your mentee to call you on the weekends or at 3 a.m., make it known to the mentee. To keep distractions to a minimum, the mentor and mentee may agree to meet at regular intervals and only check in occasionally between meetings. Other mentors may not mind more regular phone calls and emails.

White explains that some physicians struggle with boundary issues and may try to overstep the mentor/mentee roles, which should remain professional. It is the mentor's job to explain why certain behaviors aren't appropriate and enforce the boundaries. "If your mentee calls you in the middle of the night ­because he needs a ride home, it's gone too far," White says.

White stresses that mentors are not therapists and should not try to act as such. Rather, if a mentee has a problem that is serious in nature or out of the realm of the mentor's expertise, it is the mentor's duty to refer the mentee to an appropriate professional. For example, if a mentee can't concentrate at work because of family problems, the mentor can recommend a family therapist who can help the mentee work out his or her problems but should not try to play the role him- or herself.