Supporting Women in Academia: A Dyad Mentorship Model

What problem was addressed?

Scholarship is required for promotion at many academic institutions, but structured mentorship programs are often lacking, especially for women who are underrepresented in senior positions in academia.¹ A mentorship model consisting of female clinician-researchers, clinician-educators, and trainees can potentially support scholarship, but each team member faces unique challenges. Clinician-researcher faculty possess research expertise but face project deadlines, which makes collaborating with clinical faculty or trainees, who must prioritize their clinical workload, challenging. Clinician-educator faculty have clinical expertise and frequent contact with trainees but often lack adequate research skills to support trainees in scholarship. Trainees often aspire to produce scholarly work but may lack scholarship skills and interface less with clinician-researcher faculty. In the current system, few opportunities exist to coordinate the strengths of these collaborators and navigate barriers to successfully complete scholarly projects together.

What was tried?

We created a faculty mentorship dyad consisting of a mid-career female clinician-researcher and a junior-level female clinician-educator. The dyad formed when a trainee approached the clinician-researcher faculty to collaborate on a scholarly project, and the clinician researcher approached the clinician-educator as a co-mentor because of a shared clinical interest. When initiating a project, the mentors met with the trainee to discuss interests, skills, learning objectives, project timeline, and deliverables. The mentors then provided trainees with a “welcome letter” summarizing the initial meeting and outlining team member expectations, including how to communicate and the role of each mentor based on their expertise. During the project, mentors and trainees met regularly according to a predetermined timeline. Trainees led mentorship meetings, during which they provided updates and solicited mentor guidance. Upon project completion, mentors debriefed with trainees and collected feedback through a voluntary, anonymous survey.

What lessons were learned?

Between 2019 and 2021, our dyad mentorship program supported six female trainees: three residents and three medical students. Trainees’ projects produced four poster presentations at national conferences, one funded grant application, one published op-ed, one manuscript currently under peer review, and two peer-reviewed publications. Trainee survey responses indicated that they benefited from the mentors’ guidance, knowledge, organization, and resources provided. The mentorship program increased trainees’ ability to perform various research-related tasks including performing literature searches, formulating research questions, and preparing and submitting manuscripts. The clinician-educator benefitted from the clinician-researcher’s expertise in study design, data analysis, manuscript preparation, and grant writing. The clinician-researcher benefitted from greater trust and regular contact between the trainee and clinician-educator, which helped maintain trainee accountability and kept the project on track. Over time, we learned the importance of defining a feasible project within the trainee’s timeframe and clarifying each team member’s role during our initial team meeting, as this helped the trainee know what to expect from each mentor and how to contact them. Our researcher and clinician faculty dyad mentorship model was successful in teaching research skills to trainees and in producing scholarly work for participating faculty, residents and students. This mentorship model can be implemented by other educators and institutions to support scholarly work by female trainees and faculty in academic medicine.