Mentoring the mentor: another tool to enhance mentorship.

Abstract

Highlighting in a proactive fashion the importance of mentoring and of mentoring the mentors helps enrich how our medical societies can further contribute to the well-being of society at large. Implementation of a successful mentoring program is likely to perpetuate and grow the positive effects of mentorship, and mentoring-the-mentor considerations raised herein are likely to enhance overall mentorship. Mentoring the mentors provides an alternative "top down" approach to complement the essential and more traditional "bottom up" emphasis that we currently aim to provide to trainees on the importance of identifying appropriate mentors and what it takes to be role model mentees.