A model mentor 

By Nettie Reynolds, MDiv, interfaith chaplain 

“Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom.”—William Osler 

My mentor and supervisor in a large hospital system modeled this quotation every day by the way he treated learners, trainees, and those he supervised. When a mistake was made, he offered gentle correction and guidance. In one instance, I was working with a family whose dynamics felt impossible to navigate. The patient was unconscious, and her two adult children had a long history of conflict. They argued in the room, tension filling the space. I tried to encourage calmer voices, to help them speak to one another more gently. It didn’t work. 

Afterward, I went to my supervisor and told him how defeated I felt. I cried as I described my sense of failure, how I couldn’t help them to get along, how the room felt out of control. He listened patiently. Then he asked me where I thought I’d gone wrong. After listening, he said something I’ve never forgotten. The more you try to make others get along, the more you become attached to that outcome. But you’re stepping into interpersonal dynamics that have likely existed for many years. You can’t change those. You have to work within them. 

Next, he offered practical guidance. If both adult children were present and arguing, I could suggest moving to a private sitting room so they wouldn’t disturb other patients. Or I could propose that they visit at separate times to reduce conflict in the room. I tried this later, and it worked. 

But the greater gift he gave me wasn’t the strategy. It was the way he helped me recover my confidence. He didn’t diminish me for struggling. He didn’t frame the situation as a failure of competence. He treated my distress as a natural response to difficult work and helped me regain my agency. That moment taught me something essential about mentoring and teaching: it’s about supporting trainees to fulfill their potential. 

In healthcare, and in life, mistakes are inevitable. Uncertainty is unavoidable. No amount of training can fully prepare someone for the emotional complexity of caring for people in crisis. What determines whether or not clinicians grow after a mistake is sometimes how correction is delivered afterward.

Sometimes clinical environments confuse rigor with harshness. Feedback is given publicly rather than privately. Correction is framed as exposure rather than guidance. The underlying message becomes clear quickly: Don’t show uncertainty and don’t admit mistakes. Over time, that message leaves a mark. Clinicians carry early training experiences for decades. They remember the attending who humiliated them during rounds. The supervisor who responded to vulnerability with impatience. They learned it was safer to appear confident than to ask for help. 

As a chaplain, I sat with many clinicians who quietly carried those wounds. They spoke about burnout, self-doubt, and moral exhaustion, often tracing their distress back to early experiences where learning came paired with shame. What my supervisor modeled instead was a different kind of authority. He understood that kindness doesn’t dilute standards. It stabilizes people enough to meet them. His correction was specific and grounded. He named what I could do differently. He also made room for my emotional response. That combination allowed learning to take root. 

Psychological safety is often discussed in abstract terms, but in clinical training it’s deeply embodied. It determines whether someone can think clearly under pressure or become flooded with fear. When people feel safe enough to reflect rather than defend, learning accelerates. 

Kindness in mentorship isn’t permissiveness. It’s saying, “I see you trying. I trust your intentions. Let’s adjust the approach without breaking your confidence.” This matters because healthcare is already an environment of relentless demand. Healthcare professionals arrive at work carrying the ordinary weight of being human. A spilled cup of coffee. A child who couldn’t find their shoes. An argument at home that wasn’t resolved before work. None of that completely disappears at the hospital door. 

And yet medical culture often expects emotional erasure. The myth persists that professionalism requires the absence of personal strain. Denying that strain only pushes it underground, where it surfaces later as burnout, disengagement, or departure from the field altogether. 

Kind mentorship acknowledges the full context in which learning occurs. It recognizes that clinicians don’t train in isolation. They train while grieving, parenting, worrying, aging, and holding the cumulative weight of patient suffering. When leaders choose to correct with kindness, they communicate that growth is possible without humiliation. That accountability doesn’t require cruelty. Culture is changed through daily interactions, often in moments no one else sees. 

For those who train, supervise, or mentor clinicians, the work of kindness doesn’t require grand gestures. It begins with attention. A pause. A willingness to ask a different question. Before offering correction to others, it can help to ask: 

1. Am I trying to fix the situation, or am I helping this person learn how to stand inside it? 

2. Does my feedback preserve this person’s dignity, even as it asks them to grow? 

3. When this moment is remembered years from now, will it be recalled as a turning point or a wound? 

In healthcare, we often focus on what clinicians know and what they can do. We spend less time asking who they are becoming as they learn. But that question matters deeply. Because the way we train clinicians shapes not only their competence, but their capacity to remain human inside the work. And kindness, offered quietly in moments of correction and guidance, is one of the forces that makes that possible. 

This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.