The Mentorship Blueprint: A Comprehensive Review for the Development of Programs in Pharmacy Education

Background: Mentorship has benefits for students and faculty, helping to support their professional development, connectedness, and career endeavors. While the value of mentorship programs is well documented in the literature, there is less practical guidance and few compiled resources to start a program. This paper reviews different mentorship practices in pharmacy education and provides a list of strategies to develop high-functioning mentorship programs or groups. Methods: A review of the literature was conducted through PubMed and other databases. If the titles and abstracts met the initial criteria for relevance to the topic, the complete article was reviewed in the context of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Included articles focused on mentorship, mentorship programs, mentorship development, mentoring faculty or students, or mentoring in the workplace. Results: Twenty-three studies were included in the final review. Summaries and key points from the studies were reviewed and discussed. The advantages of mentorship programs include increased social connection, goal setting, and professional development. Challenges include increased time commitments and difficulty in determining objective markers of success. Critical components have been extracted from the literature, and key resources and templates have been provided to aid in mentorship program development. Conclusions: This review summarizes the pharmacy mentorship literature and provides user-friendly tables to quickly locate resources to build a mentorship program in pharmacy education.