Mentoring in radiology: An asset worth exploring!

Residents experience high pressure to be successful in both their career and in keeping up an optimal work-life balance. With a mentoring program, faculties can alleviate stress and provide help for their residents. It is now well established that mentor-mentee relationships during medical school, have influence in career decisions and professional identity formation. The same can be said for mentor-mentee relationships during radiology residency. In general, universal rules of mentoring are also useful and applicable in the field of radiology. These universal rules for establishing a successful mentoring relationship include creating a relationship of trust and confidentiality, clearly defining roles and responsibilities, establishing short- and long-term goals, using open and supportive communication, and collaboratively solving problems. The institutions and the radiology departments should be well prepared and aware of the responsibility to have trainees, providing time for mentors to dedicate to their academic duties. They have to implement strategies to effective mentor matching and orientation as well as the ability to provide evaluation with qualitative feedback. Periodic assessment should be warranted together with the incorporation of new technology as it plays a critical role in the training of millennial radiologists as they take the profession into a technology-laden future of medical imaging.