Mentorship in postgraduate training programmes: views of Canadian programme directors

Many academic training programmes have developed mentorship programmes for postgraduate doctors in training, but little is known about the factors that influence their establishment.

Canadian postgraduate training directors were surveyed to determine views on mentorship and factors associated with the establishment of these programmes.

A total of 199 of 344 (58%) programme directors completed an online survey. Overall, 65% of respondents reported that their training programmes had a mentorship programme and 40% felt there was a need for more structured mentorship in training programmes. Univariate analysis showed that mentorship programmes were present significantly more often in larger programmes, internal medicine-based training programmes, and in programmes where the acting programme director had either been part of a mentorship programme during his or her own training or felt that mentorship had played an important role in his or her professional development. In adjusting for covariates using a logistic regression analysis, only those factors directly attributable to a programme director's personal mentoring experiences remained significantly associated with having a mentorship programme. Those who felt that mentorship had played a role in their own careers (P = 0.008, odds ratio [OR] = 3.3, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.7-6.6) or who had been part of a mentorship programme during their own training (P = 0.01, OR = 6.6, 95% CI 1.4-30.1) were more likely to have an active mentorship programme at their institution.

A need for more structured mentorship was identified for many training programmes. Overall, programme directors' previous mentoring experiences were independently associated with having a mentorship programme.