title: Towards an evidence based approach to novice mentoring in academic clinical practice: Lessons from Internal Medicine and practical applications for Palliative Medicine
Creators: name: Radha Krishna, Lalit
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2024

description: Introduction: Mentoring boosts the professional and personal development of mentees and mentors and raises the reputation of host organisations. In Palliative Medicine, mentoring shapes thinking, enhances patient centred care and improves interprofessional collaborations. Inspired by these successes, I designed the Palliative Medicine Initiative (PMI) and created the ‘Novice Mentoring’ approach to provide structured research mentoring support to medical students and/or junior doctors focused on publishing their research in peer reviewed journals. However, poor characterization of Novice Mentoring has left it vulnerable to the nebulous threat of ‘ethical issues in mentoring’ jeopardising all forms of mentoring. Better delineation of Novice Mentoring and the threat of ‘ethical issues in mentoring’ is key to sustaining the PMI. Aims: This thesis seeks to understand ‘what is required to ensure a consistent and safe Novice Mentoring approach?’ Methods: Developed from my reviews of education research approaches in Palliative Medicine, I proffer the Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) research methodology to structure an accountable and reproducible evidence based approach to address the aims of this thesis. SEBA’s Split Approach’s concurrent use of thematic and directed content analysis, and it’s Jigsaw Perspective’s melding of identified themes and categories, forward a more holistic overview of regnant mentoring data. SEBA’s Funnelling Process then verifies the identified themes/categories against summaries of included articles, creating funnelled domains that frame the discussion. Results: Novice Mentoring begins when micro-environments representing each mentee, mentor, and host organisation’s goals, abilities, interests, and circumstances combine to form mentoring relationships within a mentoring ecosystem. The mentoring framework and assessment of the mentoring ecosystem guides the mentoring relationship through Novice Mentoring’s competency based stages, allowing for timely support of the mentees. This feedback process and oversight of the mentoring ecosystem facilitates ‘balance’ between individual needs of the mentoring relationship and consistency in the mentoring approach, structure in the assessment processes within a nurturing mentoring ecosystem. Discussion: Inadequate support, assessments, and/or oversight of the mentoring ecosystem precipitate ‘ethical issues in mentoring’. However, these threats may be addressed by using the Novice Mentoring Framework to structure the mentoring ecosystem. In addition, the concept of ‘equipoise’ is proffered as a means of assessing mentoring program sustainability. Conclusion: Whilst published in peer-reviewed journals with the hope of revolutionising mentoring, the SEBA methodology I designed and my conceptualisation of terms such as ‘ethical issues in mentoring’, the ‘mentoring ecosystem’, ‘balance’, ‘equipoise’ and the Novice Mentoring Framework will benefit from external critique and independent review to enhance their validity.