Mentorship perceptions and experiences among academic family medicine faculty: Findings from a quantitative, comprehensive work-life and leadership survey.

OBJECTIVE: To collect information about the types, frequency, importance, and quality of mentorship received among academic family medicine faculty, and to identify variables associated with receiving high-quality mentorship.
DESIGN: Web-based survey of all faculty members of an academic department of family medicine.
SETTING: The Department of Family and Community Medicine of the University of Toronto in Ontario. PARTICIPANTS: All 1029 faculty members were invited to complete the survey. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Receiving mentorship rated as very good or excellent in 1 or more of 6 content areas relevant to respondents' professional lives, and information about demographic and practice characteristics, faculty ratings of their local departments and main practice settings, teaching activities, professional development, leadership, job satisfaction, and health. Bivariate and multivariate analyses identified variables associated with receiving high-quality mentorship.
RESULTS: The response rate was 66.8%. Almost all (95.0%) respondents had received mentorship in several areas, with informal mentorship being the most prevalent mode. Approximately 60% of respondents rated at least 1 area of mentoring as very good or excellent. Multivariate logistic regression identified 5 factors associated with an increased likelihood of rating mentorship quality as very good or excellent: positive perceptions of their local department (odds ratio [OR] = 4.02, 95% CI 2.47 to 6.54, P < .001); positive ratings of practice infrastructure (OR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.23 to 2.80, P = .003); increased frequency of receiving mentorship (OR = 2.78, 95% CI 1.59 to 4.89, P < .001); fewer years in practice (OR = 1.93, 95% CI 1.19 to 3.12, P = .007); and practising in a family practice teaching unit (OR = 1.51, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.27, P = .040).
CONCLUSION: With increasing emphasis on distributed education and community-based teachers, family medicine faculties will need to develop strategies to support effective mentorship across a range of settings and career stages. Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.