The positive impact of a facilitated peer mentoring program on academic skills of women faculty

doi:10.1186/1472-6920-12-14

BMC Med Educ. 2012; 12: 14.

Published online 2012 March 23. doi: 10.1186/1472-6920-12-14

PMCID: PMC3325854

The positive impact of a facilitated peer mentoring program on academic skills of women faculty

Prathibha Varkey,¹ Aminah Jatoi,² Amy Williams,³ Anita Mayer,⁴ Marcia Ko,⁵ Julia Files,⁶ Janis Blair,⁶ and Sharonne Hayes⁷

¹Division of Preventive and Occupational Medicine and Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

²Department of Oncology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

³Division of Nephrology and Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Rochester, MN, USA

⁴Division of Primary Care Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ, USA

⁵Department of Medicine, Women's Health Center at Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ, USA

⁶Division of Infectious Diseases at Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ, USA

⁷Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

Corresponding author.

Prathibha Varkey: varkey.prathibha/at/mayo.edu; Aminah Jatoi: jatoi.aminah/at/mayo.edu; Amy Williams: williams.amy/at/mayo.edu; Anita Mayer: mayer.anita/at/mayo.edu; Marcia Ko: ko.marcia/at/mayo.edu; Julia Files: files.julia/at/mayo.edu; Janis Blair: blair.janis/at/mayo.edu; Sharonne Hayes: hayes.sharonne/at/mayo.edu

Received June 28, 2011; Accepted March 23, 2012.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

In academic medicine, women physicians lag behind their male counterparts in advancement and promotion to leadership positions. Lack of mentoring, among other factors, has been reported to contribute to this disparity. Peer mentoring has been reported as a successful alternative to the dyadic mentoring model for women interested in improving their academic productivity. We describe a facilitated peer mentoring program in our institution's department of medicine.

Methods

Nineteen women enrolled in the program were divided into 5 groups. Each group had an assigned facilitator. Members of the respective groups met together with their facilitators at regular intervals during the 12 months of the project. A pre- and post-program evaluation consisting of a 25-item self-assessment of academic skills, self-efficacy, and academic career satisfaction was administered to each participant.

Results

At the end of 12 months, a total of 9 manuscripts were submitted to peer-reviewed journals, 6 of which are in press or have been published, and another 2 of which have been invited to be revised and resubmitted. At the end of the program, participants reported an increase in their satisfaction with academic achievement (mean score increase, 2.32 to 3.63; P = 0.0001), improvement in skills necessary to effectively search the medical literature (mean score increase, 3.32 to 4.05; P = 0.0009), an improvement in their ability to write a comprehensive review article (mean score increase, 2.89 to 3.63; P = 0.0017), and an improvement in their ability to critically evaluate the medical literature (mean score increased from 3.11 to 3.89; P = 0.0008).

Conclusions

This facilitated peer mentoring program demonstrated a positive impact on the academic skills and manuscript writing for junior women faculty. This 1-year program required minimal institutional resources, and suggests a need for further study of this and other mentoring programs for women faculty.

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