7

the time and energy to develop one or more mentor-mentee relationships. We will review the importance of receiving mentorship, assessing your own needs, finding the “best fit” mentor, and how the role of the relationship(s) may change as your career progresses. WHY IS HAVING A MENTOR IMPORTANT? Provide advice Perhaps the most important overarching goal of having a mentor is to provide counsel on how you can achieve your goals. The benefits of mentorship span the range from advising on the nitty-gritty (e.g., advising you on education and coursework, even specific classes) to larger questions of life (e.g., career opportunities, nonresearch trajectories should research not work out), and mostly the in-between (e.g., deadlines, helping set priorities, mapping out a research career). In short, a mentor can help provide structure to the otherwise unstructured academic pathway. Define your focus It is not unusual for someone beginning a research career to want to be a successful sustained investigator, have a continuous source of funding, and answer research questions that they find important. As emergency medicine is a broad field with plenty of unanswered questions, beginning researchers may not have a clear idea on where they wish to focus. A mentor can help you develop focus. WHY DO I NEED A MENTOR, AND HOW DO I FIND ONE? Judd E. Hollander, MD, FACEP Renee Y. Hsia, MD, MSc, FACEP EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH – A PRIMER CHAPTER 3 12 CHAPTER 3 — WHY DO I NEED A MENTOR, AND HOW DO I FIND ONE? Scientific focus. The questions that interest you may determine whether funding will be forthcoming. They may be important questions but may not be aligned with the strategic goals of a particular funding source. Your chances of obtaining funding are linked to the ability to align your questions to the strategic goals of funding agencies or foundations. If the broad question or focus that you are contemplating is not aligned with the desires of a funding agency, your likelihood of success is greatly reduced. You may or may not be able to answer your specific questions in your specific setting. For example, if you were interested in studying otitis media but worked in an adults-only hospital, you most likely would have an insufficient number of patients for a comparative effectiveness trial. Being able to bounce ideas off a seasoned researcher may allow you to determine whether your questions can be answered at your institution, whether you have resources available to answer them, and whether the questions fit within the mission of a potential funding source. Participation in these discussions with your mentor will allow you to tailor your goals so that they are more likely to be successfully accomplished (and funded). Identify funding opportunities. Once you have developed at least a preliminary scientific focus, it is always helpful to have an army of people sending you appropriate funding announcements. Although you can identify agencies or foundations that notify investigators of new announcements, a mentor can help you focus on items likely to be high yield and not just notices that fill your inbox. They can also send things your way when opportunities arise. Although not obvious, funding priorities get determined by investigators who sit on advisory boards to foundations. Meeting these people, knowing their priorities, and being able to market your own ideas might just lead to someone requesting funding for your specific area of interest. A mentor can facilitate these meetings, as well. Selecting publication venues. We believe that all individual projects should have goals set at the outset. You should obviously answer the relevant question, but you also should balance scientific rigor with practicality. Not all studies can be done perfectly, but it does not mean that you cannot move the field ahead. Having an idea of time and resources that can be devoted to a project should allow you to target specific journals. Knowing the preferences of general medicine versus emergency medicine target journals allows you to design your study with this information in mind. For example, JAMA does not often publish single-site studies of common conditions. It does often publish large dataset analyses and health services research. Some journals in our specialty lean toward prospective clinical trials (even if single site) and shy away from large registry analysis. Your mentor can have you better focus your expectations, even before you collect and analyze the data. Enhance collaborations and networking opportunities A mentor can help you network. Networking is not just about meeting people in the hallway and shaking hands and saying hello. It is about getting to know people, what makes them tick, and how you can work symbiotically to achieve common goals. Developing long-term relationships in our specialty enhances individual productivity. Mentors can point you to specific scientific conferences (locally, nationally, and internationally) where you can meet people who share your academic interests, whether they are in emergency medicine or another specialty with an interest in emergency care research. Mentors can develop a list of people whom you should meet. They can suggest committees where you would meet colleagues with similar interests or get to know decision makers 

1   2    3    4    5    6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25