Is there a role for mentoring in Surgical Specialty training?

Over the last decade, there have been considerable advances in the field of medical education and great strides in education research. Although all trainees should nowadays have educational supervisors there remains a focus on assessment which may detract from global support for personal and professional growth. Mentoring has been shown to help mentees overcome difficulties, discuss problems and fulfill goals and is flourishing in many areas of the private and public sectors. Within medicine, there have been such dramatic changes in training recently that additional support may be needed if the new generation of trainees are to maximise their learning and professional development over ever shorter training periods. Having a mentor; a confidential ear and sounding board who is independent from their assessment may encourage more open discussion and provide better support than is currently available. This article focuses on the needs of the surgical trainee but the concept of mentoring should not be limited to this group, and the techniques described in this paper could equally apply to any other medical speciality. The article reviews the current role of mentoring in medicine, outlines the current structure of surgical training in the UK, considers why mentoring might be beneficial in surgery, what forms it might take, how mentors would be trained and how the programme could become established.