William N. Levine, MD, FAAOS | Amiethab Aiyer, MD
October 19, 2023
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At last! You’ve made it and you are starting out as a new attending. You can do things your own way, you can move as smoothly as fellowship was and clinical/research enterprise are ripe for the taking…..or so you think
When you first start out in practice, it can be daunting especially if you don’t have senior partners. Facing a challenging case in the clinic or the OR can be difficult to figure out how best to handle the patient, the pathology and even how best to treat it. The stress associated with different responsibilities, including peer to peers, abundant documentation /paperwork can be overwhelming, and this is where aligning with mentors can be priceless.
Find your people
While residency and fellowship are great places to connect with individuals that have similar interests to yours, do not be afraid to capitalize or networking opportunities across courses or meetings both domestic and international to help expand your network of individuals with whom you can build relationships. This is certainly an important task as you navigate the early parts of your career and one that can be infinitely beneficial as you continue to traverse your career growth. Proactively seek out individuals whose interests dovetail with yours and set up meetings either during a meeting or afterwards to be able to talk about opportunities for collaboration. Do not inadvertently spread yourself in the because the quality of the relationship is extremely important both for you as potential mentee and for the other individual as a potential mentor. The more time that one can spend with a given individual in any capacity, there is more likely to be a longitudinal survivorship and success of the mentorship that blooms forward.
Do not feel that you must be limited to your subspecialty of interest with regards to the people that you connect with. Folks outside of your discipline may be able provide additional perspective and allow you to think outside the box.
Building your Board
Do not feel that you must limit yourself to having only one mentor to help guide you through your early career whether it’s in an academic or clinical capacity. As CEO of your brand, defining the executive board that can serve to not only advise but also coach and appropriately sponsor, you are important tenets of any mentorship network. Just like a patient approaches various subspecialists for their care, it is okay to bank on the strengths that these various individuals showcase to help supplement what you need at any given point. It is ideal, however, to allow for a 2-way dialogue so that the mentor may also learn from you. Even if you are the learner in the relationship early on, the best mentorships are the ones where the student becomes a teacher, and the teacher becomes to facilitate bidirectional flow of communication; this allows for success on both sides of the equation. This is in the ideal circumstance and may not always be practical. However, the longer one can stay engaged with a given individual(s), the easier it becomes for these relationships to stand the test of time and the logistics of life that often become difficult in which to maintain these relationships
Making the Best of It
While there are no formal rules for any mentorship, every individual has their own idiosyncrasies to which one should be accustomed to. Some may be totally okay with the informal text message on Saturday morning whereas others may want something that is more formally structured and scheduled given their hectic schedules. Figuring out a way to integrate these connections into your life and regularly and proactively staying connected is an important aspect of supporting the mentorship concept. While some mentorships really represent the coaching phenomenon in the context of how best to handle a clinical scenario either in the clinic or in the OR, others may involve more in-depth philosophical conversations about life and how to juggle the challenges of clinical obligations with that of personal ones. As we discussed, your board will provide you with different things at different times based on what your needs are, however it is important to give back to these individuals who are investing time into you. This is an important aspect of these relationships and nurturing their respective success. In the same way that these folks have a complete board spend time with you, is also important to do your best to get back to those who are looking to learn from you. That is something that often becomes increasingly difficult as personal professional obligations grow. However best lessons are often learned in part from looking the rearview mirror; this can help others avoid the pitfalls that you have faced and make the drive forward that much smoother.
DISCLOSURES: Dr. Levine is on the Columbia faculty, serves as Board or committee member for the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons, and is on the editorial or governing board for the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Dr. Levine serves as an unpaid consultant to Zimmer Biomet. Dr. Aiyer American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society: Board or committee member, Delee & Drez Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (Elsevier): Publishing royalties, financial or material support, Medline: Paid consultant, Medshape: Paid consultant, Miller’s Review of Orthopaedics (Elsevier): Publishing royalties, financial or material support
Read the AAOS Code of Conduct for Discussion Group Terms, Conditions and Disclaimers HERE.
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