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 dept/hospital to discuss things with. She had lots of useful advice, and it was helpful to hear her own experiences.
Joining Enhance as a mentee
- Receive impartial advice and support from a like-minded professional
- Learn from the experiences of someone outside your day to day work
- Develop your non-clinical skills, discussing the challenges you face
- Share your ‘wins’ and achievements
- Identify areas for development, allowing you to continually grow in your career
How Enhance works
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
Helping mentoring work for you
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
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.