Mentoring and the career satisfaction of male and female academic medical faculty.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Purpose
To explore aspects of mentoring that might influence medical faculty career satisfaction and to discover whether there are gender differences.Method
In 2010-2011, the authors surveyed 1,708 clinician-researchers who received (in 2006-2009) National Institutes of Health K08 and K23 awards, which provided mentoring for career development. The authors compared, by gender, the development and nature of mentoring relationships, mentor characteristics, extent of mentoring in various mentor roles, and satisfaction with mentoring. They evaluated associations between mentoring and career satisfaction using multivariable linear regression analysis.Results
The authors received 1,275 responses (75% response rate). Of these respondents, 1,227 (96%) were receiving K award support at the time and constituted the analytic sample. Many respondents had > 1 designated mentor (440/558 women, 79%; 410/668 men, 61%; P < .001). Few were dissatisfied with mentoring (122/1,220, 10.0%; no significant gender difference). Career dissatisfaction was generally low, but 289/553 women (52%) and 268/663 men (40%) were dissatisfied with work-life balance (P < .001). Time spent meeting or communicating with the mentor, mentor behaviors, mentor prestige, extent of mentoring in various roles, and collegiality of the mentoring relationship were significantly associated with career satisfaction. Mentor gender, gender concordance of the mentoring pair, and number of mentors were not significantly associated with satisfaction.Conclusions
This study of junior faculty holding mentored career development awards showed strong associations between several aspects of mentoring and career satisfaction, indicating that those concerned about faculty attrition from academic medicine should consider mentor training and development.Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- DeCastro, R; Griffith, KA; Ubel, PA; Stewart, A; Jagsi, R
Published Date
- February 2014
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 89 / 2
Start / End Page
- 301 - 311
PubMed ID
- 24362376
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC4341994
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1938-808X
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 1040-2446
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1097/acm.0000000000000109
Language
- eng