INTRODUCTION

Mentoring had long been practiced from time immemorial, and it has been recognized as a tool to success in different professions.¹ In both undergraduate and postgraduate education, it is a method of transfer of knowledge.^2,3 Worldwide, medicine is an elite profession with much prestige attached to it.⁴ Hence, mentoring has been commonly practiced.¹

There are other terms interwoven with mentoring, these are coaching and tutoring.¹ Mentoring is important for capacity development.⁵ Therefore, mentoring is necessary for the advancement of medical career of both medical students and doctors of different cadres, that is resident doctors, medical officers, consultants and doctors in academia.¹ The process of mentoring involves an experienced person with more knowledge and skill referred to as the mentor who guides, directs, teaches, counsels, impacts and transfers skills and knowledge to a less experienced person known as the mentee.^3,6,7

There are basically two types of mentoring systems known as formal and informal mentoring. Sometimes mentoring is done individually and other times a mentor mentors a group of persons.³

Formal mentoring occurs when there is a structured mentoring system and mentees are allocated to the mentors who are consultants, chief medical officers and medical educationists.^6-8 Whereas in informal mentoring is voluntary therefore the mentee chooses the mentor as he or she is not under obligation to have a mentoed.^7,8 Like any process in life, both types of mentoring have its advantages and disadvantages. For instance, residents have been found to advance greatly personally and professionally when there is a formal mentoring system in place.^2,10

Formal mentoring is not common in Africa.⁹ One of the advantages of formal mentoring is matching mentors and mentees that can adapt and be compactible.¹⁰ Some organized systems have formal mentoring systems.⁴ These mentoring interactions take place in diverse ways within peers, in groups or individually.¹¹ There are many benefits of mentoring which may be categorized into three. They include benefits to the mentee, the mentor and the health institution which may be the medical or dental school, if the mentee is a medical student or the hospital, if the mentee is a doctor.^1-4

Mentoring is important in medicine to act as career guidance, counselling, psychosocial support, friendship, career improvement and development of clinical skills. It also enhances interest in less attractive and popular medical subspecialties and specialties, bridges the gap of hierarchy, discussion of sensitive issues and challenges, management of professional and personal development with little or no stress, increases job satisfaction, better and safer clinical care and better clinical skills.^2,4,7-9,11 Many scholars have suggested that the career of a mentee is highly influenced by a committed mentor-mentee relationship.⁴ This is a research on academic mentoring of resident doctors in two Nigerian residency training centres.

Review of Related Literature

Several studies have been conducted on mentoring in medicine of both medical students and doctors. Despite this, there is still paucity of data on mentoring in medicine in Nigeria. In Northern India, mentoring of medical students in their first year in private schools was studied. The result showed that mentees benefited from the mentoring programme as they had career advancement, enhanced research interest and better academic performance.¹² In this study, the mentors were not also left out as they had better teaching skills, job satisfaction and personal development.

In another study on mentoring of medical students, they found out that medical students in their first year had problems getting adapted to medical school and making choice of specialty, hence they noticed that the mentoring programme guided the military leaders in their career in medicine and military.¹³ Mentoring is useful for increasing the number of skilled health workers, but it can also be strategic for addressing capacity building challenges among health care workers within developing countries.⁵

In a randomized control trial of peer mentoring of junior doctors, mentoring enhanced their clinical skills.¹⁰ Olayemi et al studied mentoring of resident doctors at a teaching hospital in Ghana; only 39.3% of the resident doctors had mentors. For the study participants without mentors, 82.8% felt that having mentors was important.⁹ Okereke et al studied mentoring among healthcare professionals in Jigawa State, Nigeria. This study revealed that the number of skilled healthcare professionals increased as they were mentored.¹⁴

MATERIALS AND METHOD

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in two tertiary hospitals in Nigeria. It was done using a semi-structured questionnaire divided into three sections. Section A consisted of four questions related to social demographics which include age, sex, cadre of doctor and department. Section B consisted of two questions investigating the time the respondent chose medical specialty and when the residency primary examination in any of the postgraduate medical colleges in Nigeria or West Africa was written. The primary examination of the postgraduate medical colleges in Nigeria is the qualifying examination to commence residency training.

In Nigeria, the residency primary examination is sometimes written more than once before being successful. Section C consisted of eight structured questions and three open-ended questions that are related to the reasons for having a mentor, having a formal hospital mentoring system, adequacy of meeting with their mentor, advantages and disadvantages of mentoring of resident doctors. The research participants are resident doctors at different stages of their residency training which are interns, registrars and senior registrars. Resident doctors are also known as junior doctors.

Interns are also known as house-officers. Internship is compulsory for any medical and dental graduate after graduation from medical or dental school. After graduation from a tertiary institution, every Nigerian graduate below the age of 30 years proceeds on a one-year service outside his or her state of origin. This is known as the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Once a doctorr commences residency training in Nigeria, he or she is known as a registrar. Success at the primary examination qualifies a doctor to commence the residency training programme. Depending on the training centre and medical specialty, success in the primary examination may not be required before employing resident doctors.

RESULTS

The number of resident doctors that participated in this study was 142. Table I shows the social demographics of the respondents. Table 2 shows time of writing primary examination and choosing specialty.

Table 1: Social demographic characteristics of the respondents

Most of the respondents 65 (45.8%) of the respondents were between the age of 31-35years. 85 (59.9%) of the respondents were males and 64 (45.1%) were registrars.

Table 2: Time of writing primaries and choosing specialty

NYSC: National Youth Service Corps

Most of the respondents wrote their primaries during NYSC 41 (28.9%) and chose their specialty while in medical school 49 (34.5%).

Resident doctors that had mentors were 52 (36.6%) while 90 (63.4%) did not have a mentor. Most of the respondents 65 (45.8%) were between the ages of 31-35 years, 85 (89.9%) of the respondents were males and 64 (45.1%) were registrars. Most of the residents wrote their primary examinations during the National Youth Service Corps 41 (28.9%) and chose their specialty while in medical school 49 (34.5%). Among the residents that do not have a mentor 71 (78.9%) wish to have a mentor while, 19 (21.1%) do not wish to have a mentor. Most of the respondents who had mentors chose their mentors themselves 50 (96.2%). Table 3 shows the distribution of response to questions related to mentoring among resident doctors that have a mentor.

Table 3: Distribution of response to questions related to mentoring among doctors that have mentors

Table 4 shows respondents’ preference on mentoring while figure 1 illustrates the communication and pattern of communication with mentors. Two (3.8%) of the respondents who had a mentor wish to switch to another mentor while 50 (96.2%) do not wish to switch to another mentor.

Table 4: Distribution of doctors’ response to questions related to benefits of formal mentoring programme