Mentoring

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Women in conversation

Mentoring is an effective method of personal and professional career development that helps individuals to identify their strengths, needs, values, and, ultimately, realise their aspirations. The FMLM mentoring scheme is a core benefit of FMLM membership.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is ‘a developmental partnership through which one person shares knowledge, skills, information and perspective to foster the personal and professional growth of someone else’. Having a mentor can help work performance, motivation and engagement, as well as clarification of personal and professional career goals. Mentoring is usually based on a process of support, questioning and listening.  

What can mentoring do for you?

For the mentee

Mentoring provides a safe haven to explore professional development and work-based issues. The mentor provides a sounding board for difficult decisions, an independent view on things, access to knowledge and experience and someone to encourage you when things are not going well. Mentees typically progress faster in their learning than those without a mentor.

For the mentor

Mentoring is a great opportunity to develop skills in developing others. It gives mentors the opportunity to reflect and review their own experience and offer insight into the learning gained. Working with the mentee’s issues often leads to invaluable insights into their own working situation. When asked what they gain from mentoring, mentors often say they gain intellectual challenge and the satisfaction of helping another develop. 

How it works

The FMLM mentoring scheme is unique as it offers access to support from across FMLM's diverse membership base which encompasses a variety of specialities and career grades; from undergraduates to senior clinical managers.

The FMLM mentoring scheme is invaluable in providing independent support which, unlike schemes provided by training providers and specialty specific colleges is geared towards leadership development.

The FMLM mentoring scheme is open to all career grades and membership types and members can obtain guidance on topics including; careers advice, growing a support network, leadership development opportunities and support as a future clinical fellow. 

Mentoring is a valuable service provided to FMLM members. Our mentoring scheme provides a matching process or the chance to search for matches individually.

If you are interested in becoming a mentor or mentee, get in touch with enquiries@fmlm.ac.uk to find out more.  

More about mentoring

In the webinar recordings below, Alexis Hutson introduces how mentoring interacts with and informs your professional life, and how it can be used as a powerful personal developmental tool. The presentation and provides an insight into the following four topics:

  1. Modern developmental mentoring
  2. Mentoring’s impact on leadership
  3. Informal V Formal mentoring
  4. How to be an effective mentor and mentee

For recent studies on the benefits of leadership mentoring in healthcare, you might find the following resources helpful:

  • "The Nature and Evolution of the Mentoring Relationship in Academic Health Centers" (2022) examines how mentoring relationships within healthcare institutions benefit both mentors and mentees. It highlights that effective mentoring can enhance professional growth, improve work satisfaction, and increase retention in healthcare settings. The study also underscores how mentoring contributes to building leadership skills, fostering a positive organisational culture, and ultimately improving patient care.
  • "The Role of Mentoring, Supervision, Coaching, Teaching, and Instruction on Professional Identity Formation" (2021) offers a systematic review that looks into how mentoring impacts the professional identity formation of medical students and junior doctors. The findings indicate that mentoring significantly supports the development of leadership skills and professional growth, leading to more effective healthcare delivery

Podcast: Why we all need to get involved with mentoring

Podcast: Understanding how mentoring can benefit your career