**Abstract**

A career in academic medicine may take years to develop, as the skills it requires are often not taught at an early stage. Having a committed mentor is always a privilege and valuable to the students in medicine. Given the wide variety of mentoring relationships, they are broadly classified as formal and informal according to the way in which the relationship is formed. Mentoring relationships usually evolve in stages to ensure competencies are met before the mentees progress to the next part of their mentoring process. "Mentoring up" is a concept that empowers mentees to be active participants in their mentoring relationships. Also, the mentoring needs vary depending on the stage of professional development. Mentors have 7 roles to perform in this relationship. Despite the advantages, the mentoring process faces the challenges like unrealistic expectations from the mentees, lack of training and time constraint among the clinician educators, and so on. The challenges can be overcome by building structured mentorship programs, by organizing the faculty development programs, use of virtual platforms to facilitate the meeting and providing the academic recognition/financial incentives to the mentors providing the exemplary service.

**Keywords:** mentoring, medical education, respect, communication, technology, social media

### **1. Introduction**

Mentorship is being defined as "a dynamic, reciprocal relationship in a work environment between an advanced career incumbent (mentor) and a beginner (protégé), aimed at the development of both" [1]. The first use of the term mentor was in the eighth century BC when Homer wrote his legend of the Trojan War. Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, left his infant son, Telemachus, and his wife, Penelope, under the care of his teacher, mentor. He was responsible not only for educating his son but also for helping to develop his character and for providing him with the knowledge with which he could build his wisdom and decisions [2]. Therefore, the word "mentor" came from mentor's name. In the present day, or a noun defined as: "An experienced and trusted adviser" [3]. As per the Standing Committee on Postgraduate Medical Education (SCOPME) in the United Kingdom, mentoring is a process whereby an experienced, highly regarded, empathic person, guides another individual in the development and helps in re-examining their ideas, learning, and personal and professional development [4].

A career in academic medicine may take years to develop, as the skills it requires are often not taught at an early stage [5]. Having a committed mentor is always a privilege and valuable to students in health care professional education [6]. Mutual trust, faith and respect while working towards a shared vision/goal is the main driving force of a mentoring relationship. According to the Vygotsky sociocultural theory, effective learning happens through interactive processes of discussion, negotiation and sharing [7]. Mentors not only promote mentees' academic development, performance, satisfaction, and success, but they also can help them cope with the conflicting demands of career development and private life [8]. In today's complex academic environments, a successful faculty career requires mentoring in multiple domains.

Mentoring relationships evolve in stages to ensure particular competencies are met before mentees progress to the next part of their mentoring process. There are four phases of mentorship:

