Mentoring for clinician educators

In visiting many institutions and talking with many young clinician educators, the lack of mentorship for these positions appears striking.  No one would hire a researcher without adequate training, nor a subspecialist without the appropriate fellowship, yet we often hire physicians directly out of residency and give them the responsibility of being a ward attending physician.  This repeated occurrence makes a statement about how many medical schools value medical education.  They implicitly tell us that anyone can teach medical students and house officers. Most departments and schools spend little effort or money to train new faculty as teachers.  Many schools have elaborate mentoring programs for researchers, but how many devote as much time and energy to clinician educators.  Too often clinician educators vote with their feet, and leave to pursue private practice. Shouldn’t we spend as much (if not more) effort in training and mentoring junior clinician educators. Excellence for clinician educators requires an understanding of the education process.  We need a vocabulary to evaluate clinician educators, and we need to have mentors (both senior and peer) who will help us grow. We should put great energy towards developing clinician educator excellence.  But too often we do not.
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs