If you are planning a dental career, you need a good mentor to guide your path. A mentor offers you helpful information to shape your career successfully. Mentors share their knowledge, wisdom and experience; helping you to assess your strengths and weaknesses in dental profession and sometimes personally. According to 2014 Gallup polls, a good mentor can make a significant impact on a students' career and overall well being. The results were based on feedback from close to one million Americans of varying ages and with different educational backgrounds. Finding a mentor can be challenging but the payoff can be great. A mentor can help you with practice management, interpersonal skills and real world experience that would not be normally taught in a dental school. He or she can help motivate and inspire you to keep going when times are tough and can help you see the 'big picture'. A mentor can help and guide you discover the best easiest way of doing professional things and will help you to avoid learning lessons the hard way.
Qualities of a Mentor
- Dental mentors should have good names and reputations among the dental community. A great mentor will be at the top of the respect chain, a young dentist should look for this in whomever he or she chooses to look to for advice.
- A mentor should have professional and personal stability. Dentistry involves hard work, and we should not stop learning. Maintaining professional and personal stability are crucial for overall health. Stability keeps the practice on an even wheel, minimising the lows and making it easier to achieve sustainable growth.
- A mentor will be able to teach you many techniques which help you increase patient flow and enhance your professional skills. There are many available practice-management groups/study clubs that can assist you in establishing a practice.
- Young dentists should look for accessibility and would face a myriad of new problems and issues. They are usually not secure in their clinical abilities or skills, and mentors can help them overcome their insecurities and avoid the various pitfalls they encountered in their early days of practice.
Role of a mentor in shaping your career
While many of us have been inspired by any individual/team of mentors, the inspiration or guidance can help a young budding clinician in several ways:- Development of an effective career plan
- Guidance in selecting the best subject/specialty for higher studies keeping your clinical skills, ability in mind
- Learning management skills to run your new clinical practice
- A successful mentor can be presumed to have good business and communication skills too
- For post graduates, your department guide is the key person in guiding you with publications/thesis/articles.
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