Eleanor & Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award Lecture: Mentoring Through Changing Times: Looking Back and Moving Forward‎

One of the most crucial functions that C-L fellowship program directors and faculty members provide ‎to ‎their trainees is guidance and support of their personal and professional development, AKA ‎‎Mentorship. Ideally, this is provided during the fellowship year and continues to be available into early ‎‎career stages. However, how does one stay relevant as a mentor through ongoing changes in C-L ‎‎psychiatry? For years, efforts at training and mentoring of fellows focused on graduated becoming ‎‎hospital-based clinicians in university, VA, and community settings. Some would serve as sole ‎‎providers of C-L services, while others functioned as members of multidisciplinary teams, some ‎‎oversaw C-L divisions, and others supervised or taught medical students, residents, and fellows. This ‎‎‎"traditional" role began to shift with the rise in C-L psychiatry in outpatient settings such as HIV, ‎‎oncology, and transplant. Now, graduates would face the challenge of juggling outpatient embedded ‎‎responsibilities with their hospital-based C-L duties. Further shifts arose with the rise of collaborative ‎‎care and growing appreciation for outpatient C-L psychiatry in other medical and surgical settings. As a ‎‎result, a graduate might opt to only look for a outpatient C-L or collaborative care position. A renewal ‎in ‎interest in hospital-based C-L work was brought about in recent years with the development of ‎‎proactive consultation, a pre-emptive and cost-saving model of care. In the past couple years, with ‎the ‎COVID-19 pandemic, there has now been rapid growth in telepsychiatry and with it, there are now ‎‎fully virtual C-L career options our fellowship graduates may now consider, no longer tethered to a ‎‎hospital system.‎

Given these continued changes and the evolution of C-L psychiatry care models there is a challenge for ‎‎mentors to continue to provide relevant guidance and support to their trainees, junior colleagues, and ‎‎even peers. How do these different career options and differences in one’s valuation of what each ‎‎has to offer impact the guidance given?‎

While the talk will draw some on my experiences as a fellowship director, clinical educator, and ‎‎mentor, I have enlisted the participation and viewpoints of a panel of former mentees who are at ‎‎varied stages of their careers, have different career experiences, and function as mentors themselves ‎‎to broaden the discussion and relevance to the audience.‎

Note: Not eligible for ASWB credit.