By Tim Ireland, VMD
Mentors-R-Us If you are like me, you would have graduated at a time when no one really talked about mentorship very much at all. Virtually all internships were for those interested in an academic track. Private practice internships were rare and, for the most part, were a path to higher case volume than general practice. They were for those who really wanted to ramp their skills up more quickly but were more interested in general practice than specialty and wanted to get paid a little more than their academic counterparts. In either case, the word internship signified long hours for half the pay in exchange for experience, support, and some level of oversight or, if you will, “mentorship.” In the past decade, I have hired two post-internship associates who spent their first solo night in the ER during the first week of their internship! They were given the number of their “on-call” backup, but it was made very clear that they should not ever call them. I, on the other hand, jumped directly into general practice after graduation. I was one of two full-time doctors and worked more than 2 months before I was left in the building completely alone. Granted, my boss’s version of oversight of my first enucleation on my very first day in surgery was to ask me if I knew how to do an enucleation, discuss the procedure, and say, “Sounds good! I will be upstairs if you need me.” My point is it worked for me. I had a mentor in every sense of the word. He may not have stood over me, but I knew he was always there for me. What my mentor gave me is only half of the equation. My boss/ mentor was leaving for the PVMA’s Committee Day. He would be 2 hours away, which back then meant “unreachable” since no one had phones they carried with them. He did his best to prepare me for various cases and some of the personalities that would come attached to those cases. He probably turned to leave three or four times, each time remembering one more thing to share. The final time, with his hand on the knob of the half-open door, he turned and said, “I have had a lot of vets work here. I have never worked with someone before. It is really nice working with you!” It was that moment, just 2months on the job, that I realized that I had already given him something. Mentorship may take many forms but, in all cases, it is most successful when the gift flows both ways.
28 | Keystone Veterinarian
