What’s Wrong with Mentorship in Skull Base Surgery and What Needs to Change

 

Introduction: Skull base surgery is known to be one of the most challenging surgical subspecialties. To become a successful and resilient skull base surgeon (SBS) not only requires proper training but also a mentor who can give guidance about career journey, a family or other support, that is particularly important to life outside work and ultimately to resilience or burnout. Nevertheless, there has been no previous literature investigating mentorship and other aspects of life outside surgery for SBS.

Objectives:

1. Assess the current state, characteristics, and, gaps in the mentorship of SBS.

2. Compare mentorship among SBS and non-SBS.

Methods: International survey of neurosurgeons (SBS and non-SBS) with uni- and multivariate analyses.

Results: Of 404 respondents, 250 who specified their subspecialties (n = 47 SBS, n = 203 non-SBS) were included. Two-thirds of SBS (66%) had a mentor. Most have one to two mentors and 84% of mentors are other neurosurgeons. All of those who have a mentor reported that mentorship covers surgery/work-related issues, while half provided mentorship in research. A minority provided mentorship in the area of home-life issues (25.8%), emotional support (12.9%), and leisure issues (3.2%). Most mentorship is either both formal or informal (41.9%) or informal (38.7%). Nearly half (48.4%) receive mentorship once a month.

In comparing SBS and non-SBS, SBS were over represented by males (OR: 2.60, 95% CI: 1.01–7.89, p = 0.03), work in academic centers (OR: 5.22, 95% CI: 2.25–13.5, p < 0.001), have mentors (OR: 2.16, 95% CI: 1.07–4.49, p = 0.02), other mentors (OR: 2.57, 95% CI: 1.10–6.69, p = 0.02), and be offered leadership positions than non-SBS (OR: 4.3, 95% CI: 1.46–17.16, p = 0.004).

There were no differences in SBS and non-SBS for marital status, having a child, age that they had the first child, accessing mentorship program, number of mentors, formality and satisfaction of mentorship, their most important mentor, frequency that they prefer to receive, and perspectives regarding gender of mentor and mentee.

Conclusion: SBS more frequently have mentors than non-SBS, but those mentors for both groups generally focus solely on work-related guidance. However, to develop resilience in SBS and non-SBS requires a broader conception of mentorship that includes aspects of life outside of work. We propose that training programs, professional societies, and individual mentees and mentors need to take leadership to embrace this new and broad concept of mentorship. Doing so, has broad implications that will not only benefit the individual, but ultimately patients.

Publication History

Article published online:
05 February 2024

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