BLOG: WIM Lean In Circles is the mentorship we’ve been waiting for
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Women in Medicine recently announced a new partnership with LeanIn.Org to launch WIM Lean In Circles — small groups that will meet regularly for peer mentorship.
WIM Lean In Circles provide a platform to connect with peers from across the country and across facets of medicine.
Essential mentorship
Mentorship is essential for academic productivity, personal development and career guidance. Physicians who are mentored are more likely to publish, receive grants and have overall improved career satisfaction.
In my field of hospital medicine, there are proportionally few senior faculty to mentor the growing generation of junior faculty.
Women hospitalists are underrepresented concerning measures of academic productivity vital to promotion, including publication authorship and speaking engagements.
A previous study demonstrated that women led only 16% of divisions or sections of hospital medicine. Sadly, hospital medicine is not unique. Across specialties, few women are in senior academic ranks to mentor junior women.
Peer mentorship
Peer mentorship is a highly adaptable and alternative approach to traditional mentorship. In hospital medicine, where the workforce is ill-fitted for the conventional senior mentor-junior mentee dyad, peer mentorship fills a critical gap.
Beyond hospital medicine, peer mentorship can be especially beneficial for women and those underrepresented in medicine who may struggle to find senior mentors from diverse backgrounds.
While our most accessible peer mentors are those within our home institutions, interinstitutional peer mentorship affords additional opportunities for sponsorship by creating access to networks beyond one’s own institution.
Furthermore, the nonhierarchical peer relationship creates psychological safety to discuss challenges common to women in medicine, including parental leave, burnout and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Read the full blog post at Women in Medicine Summit.
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