Trust, support, growth and career-enhancing connections
FACEM Dr Lucy Scholfield is Staff Specialist at Wagga Wagga Emergency Department, the EMET Clinical Lead for Wagga Wagga, a lecturer with the University of New South Wales, and is also a Voluntary Assisted Dying VMO. She joined the ACEM Mentor Connect program as a mentee.
When I first Fellowed in 2022, I saw the email about the ACEM Mentor Connect program and the team mentioned three names. I recognised one of the names as someone I trained with, so I thought, ‘What great luck!’. FACEM Dr Jess Rerden was my number one pick.
““Even though I am the mentee and she is the mentor, I certainly feel like we both help each other.””
She was happy to be my mentor, and we were paired up and it’s just been the most amazing thing.
It’s been really good to have someone to chat to who is at a very similar stage of their career and Jess and I have been able to troubleshoot problems together and to help each other navigate the waters of being a new FACEM, which can be quite challenging.
Even though I am the mentee and she is the mentor, I certainly feel like we both help each other. Of course, I can’t speak for Jess.
I guess it stands to reason that, being both at a similar stage of our FACEM journey, if someone is paired with a much more seasoned FACEM, the relationship would be different. But something we all know is that you can always learn something from other people, no matter what their station and their experience.
The main benefits for me, as a mentee, have been around the non-clinical aspects. ACEM’s training program is very rigorous, and it certainly prepared me for life from a medical aspect, but I feel like the mentoring helps with some of the non-clinical aspects. With Jess, the ability to speak about work-life balance – we’ve both got young families – is important to me.
Being able to talk through some ideas and situations is wonderful. Like when you’ve had a long shift and you’re tired, but you want to make sure that you’re still giving everything you can to your family and looking after yourself. Hearing how someone else managed it, or just getting some word of support can make a difference.
FACEM Dr Lucy Scholfield.
To have someone to talk to about the different ways that you can take your career now as a FACEM is great. I mean, we’re very blessed that there are so many different ways that we can curate a career these days. Being able to bounce ideas off each other about that is so helpful. Jess and I talk about everything from our day-to-day struggles to bigger picture things, like five-year plans and ten-year plans.
In terms of the time commitment, the program is very individualised. It depends on the mentor/mentee relationships and what works for both parties.
For Jess and I both having young children, we’ve certainly had some false starts with mentoring calls we’ve had to reschedule on account of kids. We rescheduled one call to happen after the kids’ bedtime one night, but both of our small humans decided that it was party-time at 8.30pm, so we had to reschedule.
We’re quite opportunistic about the way we choose to catch up with each other – there’s flexibility. It’s via Zoom or via phone, but even being able to text message, which we’ve both done at times when one of us has had a particularly challenging situation to deal with, is sometimes all that’s needed. Just being able to send a text message and to get it off your chest has been useful.
We don’t do exactly the same things in our respective careers and that’s the beauty of the mentoring program. Everyone’s going to bring different experiences to the mentor/mentee relationships.
I know there are some gentlemen who take on the majority of the roles with raising children and I do think it’s great that society is moving away from being limited by those traditional gender roles and responsibilities, but for many female FACEMs there are still some unique challenges. It’s been so useful for me to have someone like Jess who gets that, who can relate to that, and who can offer me support but also be open enough to share her own experiences – and I hope I can offer some support to her too.
We can tell each other things that some other people don’t understand. Even blokes who do take on a role as a carer of young kids don’t go through all the things that a woman going back to work after children experiences – like returning to work as a breastfeeding mum, for example. Even talking about the challenges of recovering physically – and emotionally – after childbirth and jumping back into hands-on work, as well as study.
Trust is essential in the mentor/mentee relationship. I guess the experience of Jess and myself is unique because we trained together as registrars. Jess helped me study for my primary exam way back when, so we already had that trust going in.
We also tend to see problems in a similar way, which is quite useful. Equally though, even if a mentor and mentee had a different way of approaching problems they faced, I think that would also be quite useful, as you might gain a different perspective that you might not otherwise appreciate.
““Trust is essential in the mentor/mentee relationship.””
But if you were involved with mentoring and you didn’t feel like you had that trust or that positive relationship, I would encourage anyone involved to not be afraid of saying that and to try again to find another more suitable match.
I think that at this stage of our careers, as doctors, we have an inherent understanding of the therapeutic relationship, so to speak, and if that relationship wasn’t working for either party, I think it would be very reasonable to try to gain a different mentor.
Before ACEM Mentor Connect, I did have a mentor throughout my training. I had the same mentor throughout my entire ACEM training, which I’m not sure if many people do. For me, that consistency was very useful. I remember approaching my mentor when I was just beginning my training with ACEM and he asked, ‘Okay, what do you need me to do for you?’
My answer was, ‘Okay, I’m about to do my Primary. If I start freaking out about it, I need you to tell me to pull myself together’. He said, ‘Right, got it, no worries’ – and I found that experience invaluable during my training. I remember making a call to that mentor right after I’d passed my written Fellowship exam, and I was thinking about delaying my OSCE. I’d had COVID and the kids had been sick, and I hadn’t had the best run-up, and I am still thankful, to this day, that he talked me out of delaying my OSCE and he helped me see that I was ready to sit the exam and that I should go forward.
I personally feel that, as a mentee, having a mentor who is outside of your own department is a positive. Sharing those stories with someone who can listen objectively and doesn’t bring their own biases to that conversation is helpful.
FACEM Dr Jess Rerden works at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane. Her current non-clinical portfolios include WBA Coordinator and Resident Term Supervisor, and she also holds her CCPU and has an interest in Ultrasound. She initially joined the Mentor Connect program as a mentor, but then applied as a mentee and is currently enjoying the benefits of both aspects of the program.
I’m a big believer in the power of community to provide support for both personal and professional growth. That’s one of the main reasons I was interested in ACEM’s Mentor Connect program.
““By being a mentor, part of my aim is to help others overcome obstacles and achieve their potential.”
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Across my own journey as a trainee and early career FACEM, the guidance and encouragement of mentors has helped me immensely. They’ve helped me navigate challenging situations and have also inspired me to go for my goals with confidence.
I wanted to give back and have that same positive impact by sharing the insights and strategies I’ve learned. By being a mentor, part of my aim is to help others overcome obstacles and achieve their potential. I also see this role as an opportunity to develop my leadership and communication skills, which are crucial in a career in emergency medicine.
Mentor Connect aligns with my values of empathy, collaboration, and continuous learning. I’ve gained so many valuable experiences and skills since I’ve been involved. Providing guidance and support to my mentee has taught me how to convey ideas effectively, listen actively, and provide constructive feedback. These skills are essential in mentorship but they’re also transferable to my clinical practice.
The relationships I’ve enjoyed with both my mentees and my fellow mentors have been another benefit – they really help foster a sense of community and collaboration. The network of connections that have been created from that experience have been incredibly enriching, and getting access to diverse perspectives is helpful and interesting. I’ve learned to appreciate other people’s unique challenges and strengths – and I feel that it’s been an integral part of enhancing my empathy and cultural competence too.
FACEM Dr Jess Rerden.
As a mentor, I’m continually reinforcing my knowledge and the experiences I gained through the ACEM training program and early FACEM career - and that’s all fed into developing my leadership skills, as well as expanding my professional and social networks. Feeling like I have played a part in contributing to someone else’s growth and success has given me a deep sense of personal fulfilment too. It’s a sense of purpose and achievement.
Knowing I have the support and guidance from my own mentor is so important to me too. The way Mentor Connect is set up fosters a sense of trust and safety that encourages candid and honest conversations.
I had a pre-existing relationship with my mentee Lucy because we’d gone through early training together, so that helped me feel immediately comfortable in that relationship, plus it gave me the added freedom to feel comfortable talking about life outside work. Lucy and I had already met each other’s families, so being in the program with her means we talk about emergency medicine but also talk about the way family connects with career. My mentorship with Lucy is very much a peer relationship and friendship where we are helping each other navigate our careers and work life balance.
With Charley, it was different, because until she became my mentor through Mentor Connect, we were strangers to each other - an intentional choice for me because I wanted anonymity and no self-censorship.
I was uncertain initially about the ability to connect with someone I didn’t know, but she’s a very warm and friendly person, so feeling a genuine connection came easily. I have complete trust in her as a mentor. I feel that most people who are open to the idea of signing up as mentors have those elements to their character and personality – I don’t think you’d sign on to be a mentor unless you were happy to listen without judgement and help create that safe, confidential space.
I personally see a mentorship as a sort of friendship, as opposed to only a mentorship.
““Knowing I have the support and guidance from my own mentor is so important to me too.””
To find my match for someone I could mentor, I was more interested in finding a female who was at a similar stage of being a FACEM, plus or minus children, so I could feel like I had something to share about my own experiences since becoming a Fellow.
For my own ideal mentor, I wanted someone who was in an emergency role more senior than my own. I have only been a FACEM for a couple of years, so having someone who could talk to me about functioning at a higher level of senior leadership was valuable for me as I navigate my FACEM career.
I was sent four or five potential mentor matches through the program. The first one I chose didn’t work out as well as I had initially hoped – not because we didn’t get along, but just because they were less available for me, so it didn’t really work. Finding a new match wasn’t awkward at all. It’s just one of those things.
For people who are considering being part of the program and wanting advice around matching, I feel that when I read the information people provide to describe themselves, the people who put more details about themselves and their careers make it more attractive. It gives me a better understanding of who they are, plus the added details make me think they might be more interested and more invested in the program.
Emergency medicine can be a stressful environment, and having a mentor helps foster a culture of continuous improvement and mutual support that makes the Mentor Connect program an invaluable resource for everyone in our college.
Catherine in the Mentor Connect program checks in with us regularly to see how we’re going – if we’re still happy. For me, that’s a prompt to think, ‘Oh, I haven’t reached out to my mentee enough lately’ – and so I do, and it’s always positive. I appreciate those prompts.
FACEM Dr Charley Greentree currently has three roles: Clinical Director of Education for Retrieval Services Queensland, Telehealth emergency consultant for Retrieval Services Queensland and Senior Staff Consultant for Redcliffe Hospital Queensland. She sees enormous value in mentoring and has been involved in various mentorship roles from the earliest stages of her career.
I was working in a tertiary department and if you don’t have a formal mentoring program, then a default mentoring program happens – and it’s much less resourced and it’s a lot more reactive, rather than responsive.
I knew there needed to be something more than that and what really attracted me to an earlier program I was involved in back in 2012 was that we could start to do some proactive planning and some building of mentoring and getting some training and resources into everybody. Mentoring skills help us be better clinicians, number one. They help us to be effective humans, number two, and I think it’s just a mutual win, blue ocean opportunity.
““For me, the mentoring is not just medical, it’s interdisciplinary.””
I had conversations about how mentoring was evolving through the College and the corporate support for mentoring, and then I saw some advertising in the ACEM newsletters asking for people who wanted to be part of the new Mentor Connect program, and I responded to that.
I see myself as both mentor and mentee. From my own time training, two of my beautiful mentors are both retired but I still have ongoing professional and personal relationships – true friendships – that continue.
I personally see great value in mentoring – especially in emergency. I think the hierarchy of hospitals and how we are viewed by our colleagues of other departments, the fact that we have a higher number of fractional appointments, the continuous shiftwork and that we’ve got a flat hierarchy, all add up to the need for mentoring to make sense. For me, the mentoring is not just medical, it’s interdisciplinary.
How would I describe myself as a mentor? That’s a difficult question to answer.
I’m open. I’d done a lot of informal mentoring even before being involved in the earlier mentoring program I was part of and I used to describe it as ‘barmaid’s syndrome’. I’ve got that sort of energy that people come and tell you stuff.
FACEM Dr Charley Greentree.
Mentoring programs that are formalised and structured give credibility to mentoring. It helps mentoring become visible to everyone – especially people who are a little bit more cynical about what they see as ‘soft skills’, which are essentially human factor skills, but skills that make all the difference to clinical excellence.
Coaching and mentoring are really two different strategies but as a mentor you do use a lot of coaching skills. I think now I am a fairly permissive and relaxed mentor who encourages the mentees to drive the frequency, the content and the duration. I mentor with curiosity and compassion.
Through Mentor Connect, I’ve got two mentees now. Both are recent consultants who sought a mentor through the program. I didn’t have any awareness of them or pre-existing relationship with them before the program.
It’s enjoyable, professional and, certainly from my perspective – you’d have to ask them about their own take on it – certainly beneficial and helpful to me. I hope it has been for them as well.
Certainly, in the unsolicited feedback they’ve given me, they do tell me they’ve found it helpful – even if it’s just to support them decompressing out of a difficult situation.
What do I get from my role as a mentor to Jess Rerden? Connection. I get another emergency physician’s perspective on all the challenges involved in emergency medicine. I get an opportunity to share my experience, but also to listen and learn from her shared experience as well.
One of the perceptions we’ve tried to negate over the last ten or so years is that to be a mentor, it’s very ‘zero sum’. That to be a mentor, you’re just giving, giving, giving.
““I think we’ve got to look at the fabric of emergency medicine and how we are weaving mentoring into it as a core component.””
It’s win/win. It’s synergy. It helps you reflect on your own practice; it helps you communicate more effectively, and it lets you become intergenerational by working with people who are out of your usual cohort.
The danger for mentoring is that, although it’s seen to be included, it’s still seen as an optional add-on in many ways. Instead, I think we’ve got to look at the fabric of emergency medicine and how we are weaving mentoring into it as a core component.
Because whether it’s a formal mentoring arrangement, an informal mentoring relationship or just an interaction, mentoring is happening in some form every day. I would almost guarantee it’s happening in every emergency department – and that includes in rural and remote through to tertiary centres.
I would challenge FACEMs to reflect on what they’re doing to build on their mentoring skills and how they are integrating it and showing up in these departments. I think it’s the only way we’re going to survive all the trauma of everything happening in EDs – the overcrowding and the workplace stress we face every day because of the nature of emergency medicine.
The act of mentoring itself is not discussed openly outside of the individual mentor/mentee relationship you’re in – and that’s about respecting confidentiality.
I think the confidentiality is key. Over the years, when mentoring goes bad, it’s when someone has betrayed the confidentiality of that relationship … and it’s usually the mentor. That’s because they blur it with training and supervision. Mentor Connect is good because it reinforces that it is a different relationship – and a potentially very valuable one.
ACEM’s Mentor Connect program aims to connect members and trainees with an emergency medicine colleague outside their immediate jurisdiction. For more info and to register please visit the Mentor Connect webpage.
