Enhance: Mentoring for Medics

We are committed to supporting physicians throughout their career. Enhance, the College’s new free mentoring for medics scheme, creates a safe environment for clinicians to share their experiences, learn from each other and develop key professional skills. Enhance: Mentoring for Medics aims to help you, our Members and Fellows, with your professional development by matching trained mentors with mentees. Research has shown the positive benefits of going through the mentoring process during periods of transition and other challenging times in your career.

The mentoring platform operates on a cloud based approach and includes matching tools with advanced matching algorithms. It helps find optimum matches and eliminates “unconscious bias”. You create your own relevant mentee or mentor profile, detailing your areas of work, skills and experience. The advanced algorithm will find the most appropriate matches for you. But you will have the final choice of who you are matched with to begin your mentoring journey.

Join as a Mentee

Mentoring is an important part of your career development and the support and guidance of an experienced professional can help you in all areas of your work.

How can I benefit from having mentor?

Receive impartial advice and support from a like-minded clinician
Discuss the challenges you're facing, and learn from the experiences of someone outside your daily working environment.
Identify areas for development, allowing you to continually grow in your career
Learn from the experiences of someone outside your day to day work

As a mentee you apply to join Enhance our mentoring service through an online platform which will guide you through the process. Once you register and we will confirm your College membership (at present UK Associate, Collegiate and Fellows), and then you can create your profile. Within your profile you will be able to specify:

Whether you would prefer your mentor to work within or outside your specialty
Would you like your mentor to be within or outside your NHS Trust environment and your immediate area of work
Preferred gender of mentor

Areas of development or challenges you are facing that and would like to discuss, these include:

Management and leadership issues
Professional development and career transition
Interpersonal relationships and team working
Time management
Personal skills/attributes
Work life balance

It is useful to know what you hope to get out of mentoring relationship, and the particular areas you would like to discuss during your mentoring journey. The platform has many tools and tips to help you define your goals and guide you along the process. The matching process is based on the skills, experience and knowledge you would like to gain and you can choose to be paired with someone within your speciality or location, or outside of these areas. We use a highly developed algorithm to find the most appropriate mentors for you. This also eliminates 'unconscious bias' during the matching process.

“I found mentoring very helpful over the first 18 months of being a consultant. My mentor was very supportive, and a good listener. It was nice to have someone outside my department or hospital to discuss things with. She had lots of useful advice, and it was helpful to hear her own experiences.”

Enhance Mentee

Join as a Mentor

It is recognised that mentoring is an important part of a clinician's development but it is also a rewarding experience for the mentor and an opportunity to gain insight into other areas of healthcare. You will be able share your knowledge and experiences with a less experienced clinician, contributing to their growth during a time of transition or in a challenging environment.

How can I benefit from mentoring others?

Share your knowledge and experiences, contributing to the growth of a clinician during a time of transition or challenge
Work with a like-minded professional outside your own daily working environment
Receive valuable mentoring training which will develop and improve your own listening and communication skills which you can use in your day-to-day role

As a mentor you apply to take part in our mentoring service through an online platform, which will guide you through the simple registration process. Once you register, we will confirm your association with the College and then you will be able create your profile.

Alongside highlighting your areas of expertise and experience that would be valuable to others
Within your profile you specify your specialty and place of work, gender and how you would like mentoring discussions to take place- in person, or through Skype etc.
Work with a like-minded professional outside your own daily working environment and benefit from discussing different perspectives
Receive valuable mentoring training which will develop and improve your own listening and communication skills which you can use in your day-to-day role.
At present to join as a mentor you must be a Member of Fellow of the College within 2 years of completing your training or a consultant based in the UK.

We use a highly developed algorithm to define the most appropriate mentee/mentor relationships. This also eliminates 'unconscious bias during the matching process. The mentee will be provided with a list of the best matches for them, at this stage they will be able to review the profiles of potential mentors, and choose the person they feel would be best to have their mentoring discussions. They will then send a request for you to mentor them. At this stage, you will be able to review their profile and decide whether you believe you are able to support them.

You are able to accept or reject the mentoring request though the platform. If you accept the match, it is up to the mentee to make contact through the platform to arrange the conversation. Mentees are provided with tools to help define their goals, there are also tools, tips and videos to support mentors. When you register as a mentor for the College, you will be invited to complete an online training course. Once your certificate has been received by our administration team then your profile will be approved on the platform. If you would like to know more information, please email enhance@rcpe.ac.uk.