A facilitated peer mentoring program for junior faculty to promote professional development and peer networking.

The future success of academic medicine relies heavily on the recruitment, development, and retention of faculty.1–4 Integral to the advancement and productivity of these faculty members is their ability to generate a career vision, map a path to success, and align their activities with their career goals. Although some skills may be acquired in a workshop or classroom setting, experience and individual guidance through the process is essential to achieve the most robust outcome. Experiential guidance via mentorship is important to early career development and results in improved job satisfaction and retention.5–9 Despite the critical need for mentorship, a survey of junior faculty revealed that “less than half…felt adequately mentored”; however, those who were mentored spent significantly more time pursuing “scholarly activity.”10 Faculty on the clinician-educator track are less likely to have a mentor than colleagues on the physician-scientist track, and if a faculty member’s scholarship efforts are not supported by extramural funding sources, she or he may not be encouraged to seek a mentoring relationship.11 Numerous publications have described effective faculty development programs, which place mentorship in a central role and which may more significantly affect women’s career advancement than men’s.4,11–22 Although the mentoring relationship has traditionally followed the dyad model of one senior mentor and one junior mentee, newer models include a peer mentoring network.23,24 Although many faculty development programs have focused on scholarly publication as the sole outcome of interest,12,14,17,25 others have included reported satisfaction, confidence, and empowerment.15,18,19,26 The purpose of our study was to explore the design, implementation, and efficacy of a faculty development program designed both to provide a skill development curriculum and mentorship experience to improve early-career advancement skills for junior faculty and to create a peer mentoring network.