Mentoring for NHS doctors: perceived benefits across the personal-professional interface.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate NHS doctors' perceived benefits of being involved in mentoring schemes and to explore the overlaps and relationships between areas of benefit. DESIGN: Extended qualitative analysis of a multi-site interview study following an interpretivist approach. SETTING: Six NHS mentoring schemes across England. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Perceived benefits. RESULTS: While primary analysis resulted in lists of perceived benefits, the extended analysis revealed three overarching areas: professional practice, personal well-being and development. Benefits appear to go beyond a doctor's professional role to cross the personal-professional interface. Problem solving and change management seem to be key processes underpinning the raft of personal and professional benefits reported. A conceptual map was developed to depict these areas and relationships. In addition secondary analysis suggests that in benefitting one area mentoring may lead to consequential benefits in others. CONCLUSIONS: Prior research into mentoring has mainly taken place in a single health care sector. This multi-site study suggests that the perceived benefits of involvement in mentoring may cross the personal/professional interface and may override organizational differences. Furthermore the map developed highlights the complex relationships which exist between the three areas of professional practice, personal wellbeing and personal and professional development. Given the consistency of findings across several studies it seems probable that organizations would be strengthened by doctors who feel more satisfied and confident in their professional roles as a result of participation in mentoring. Mentoring may have the potential to take us beyond individual limits to greater benefits and the conceptual map may offer a starting point for the development of outcome criteria and evaluation tools for mentoring schemes.

A report of an evaluation of the pilot peer review scheme for general dental practitioners working in the general dental services in England.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the pilot peer review scheme for general dental practitioners, working in the general dental services in England. DESIGN: A retrospective analysis of a 50% random sample of end of project résumés. SETTING: The scheme was piloted from August 1991 to April 1996. At the end of each project a résumé was completed. METHODS: The random sample of résumés was subjected to content analysis by three reviewers who had previously undergone consistency training. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The range of topics reviewed, the choice of single or multiple topics, the direct relevance of projects to patient care and the comments of the scheme's participants. RESULTS: 332 résumés were analysed, 89% included positive comments. Overall 42% of projects reviewed single topics, with participants in 4 out of 13 regions favouring this approach. 61% of topics related directly to patient care. CONCLUSIONS: The pilot peer review scheme was enthusiastically welcomed by the participants and achieved its objectives of encouraging initiatives to improve patient services and testing different types of peer review.

The observation of educational events.

This booklet is a guide to using observational research methods in medical and health-care education. Emphasis is given to the role of observation in providing concrete, detailed descriptions of how educational events unfold. It is suggested that observational methods have a valuable contribution to make to our understanding of the structures, functions and 'mechanisms' of educational activities. Three approaches to observation are described: participant observation, interaction analysis and fine-grained sequential analysis. Questions of reliability and validity are addressed. Finally, some sources of further information are given.