Advancing professional healthcare by the use of mentorship

Mentorship is a method used to train healthcare professionals across a variety of disciplines. It comprises of a relationship between the ‘mentor’, or the trainer, and a ‘mentee’, or the learner. It is important to determine whether or not mentorship is a useful technique to increase the clinical competencies of healthcare professionals, to ascertain where further research should be directed. This paper explores the current knowledge on using mentorship to train new healthcare professionals and students in varying healthcare systems. It explores mentorship from both a clinical competency perspective, as well as a personal perspective.