Self-mentoring in medicine

By Che’ Harris, MD, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Haruka Torok, MD, University of Minnesota

“You don’t need a damn mentor.” Those were words from one of my (Che’s) mentors in medicine that have reverberated in my mind ever since. We were discussing what I should include in a presentation on mentorship in internal and hospital medicine. I thought of the usual questions: How do physicians find mentors? What happens when you can’t find a mentor? How can institutions build effective mentorship programs?

After listening, my mentor offered a different approach. “You don’t have to tell people how to find mentors,” he said. “You could say something like, ‘You don’t need a damn mentor.’” I laughed and then he explained what he meant. He didn’t have just one person he considered his mentor. When he needed help, he found people who could solve specific problems.

I talked about this with my colleague, Haruka, and we thought that maybe people focused too much on finding one mentor—that one person who could provide career advice, open doors, offer encouragement, troubleshoot problems, and know exactly what we needed at every stage of our careers. Perhaps the better question was: What do I need now, and who or what can help me get it?

Self-mentoring

Self-mentoring—the idea seemed counterintuitive. How could I mentor myself? Wasn’t the point of mentorship that someone with more experience guides someone with less? Through medical school, residency, and eventually as an attending hospitalist, I never recalled anyone saying, “Mentor yourself.”

But upon reflection, I realized that, though unstructured, I’d been self-mentoring in some form for years. I taught myself what I needed to know. I identified my knowledge gaps and sought resources to fill them. Without prompting, I pursued projects, learned new skills, sought out collaborators, recovered from failures, and occasionally changed direction when something wasn’t working. I thought of those activities as independence, perseverance, self-study, or sometimes simply getting the work done. I never thought of them as self-mentoring.

That changed when Haruka and I began exploring self-mentoring and eventually spoke with Dr. Marsha Carr, who’s developed a structured approach. We learned an important distinction—self-mentoring isn’t simply working hard or figuring things out on your own. It includes intentionally assessing where you are, deciding where you want to go, identifying what you need to get there, seeking the appropriate resources and people, and holding yourself accountable for moving forward. Something clicked. The more we explored the concept, the more we realized this process was familiar to clinicians. We do something remarkably similar every day.

Think about what happens when a patient isn’t improving as expected. We don’t stick to cookie-cutter guidelines or stay fixed on practices that have worked in the past. We act. This is because individual goals and circumstances are fluid. We might revisit the history, re-examine the patient, review the lab results, or ask a colleague, “Can I run something by you?” Sometimes we consult specialists. Other times, we return to the literature or discover something we initially overlooked. We gather information from different sources, reconsider our approach, and decide what to do next. We don’t expect one person to have all the answers. Why should navigating our careers be any different?

Perhaps the word self can make self-mentoring sound uncomfortable. It can sound like an argument for rugged individualism—No mentor? Figure it out yourself. That’s not what it means. Self-mentoring doesn’t eliminate traditional mentorship or peer mentorship. Nor does it absolve institutions of the responsibility to create environments in which clinicians can find meaningful guidance and sponsorship. Instead, self-mentoring changes where the process begins. It begins with ourselves. We can ask, Where am I now? Where do I want to go? Who or what can help me get there? What’s my next step?

Answers may often lead to seeking out another person. One colleague may help us work through a problem. A senior physician can offer career advice. Someone else might advocate for us when we’re not in the room (sponsors). Other times, we might coach ourselves through difficult decisions or advocate for opportunities.

Instead of searching for the elusive mentor who somehow has everything we need, we can take greater responsibility for figuring out what we need and then finding it. The goal isn’t to mentor ourselves alone. The goal is to own the process.

Self-mentoring and clinical excellence

Clinical excellence includes lifelong learning and adapting to evolving resources and information to provide exceptional patient care. This requires curiosity, humility, resourcefulness, and a willingness to seek expertise. In other words, habits of great clinical practice are also habits of self-mentoring. We assess where we are, identify what’s missing, seek out people and resources as needed, act on what we’ve learned, and reassess.

I now understand my mentor’s provocative suggestion differently than when I first heard it. “You don’t need a damn mentor” wasn’t an instruction to work alone. It was an invitation to take control of my own professional growth.

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