Mentoring Geropsychology Interns and FellowsMichele J. Karel, Ph.D., VA Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School

Supervisors as mentors?

• Becoming an “accidental mentor”• How does mentoring fit into ~one year

supervision relationship?• It can and often does!• Thanks to work of Dr. W. Brad Johnson on

“transformational supervision”

Internship year: Developmental challenges

• New roles and responsibilities– Full time clinical role, increased autonomy

• Professional identity– Do I know what I’m doing?…People think I

do…; What’s my role on team?

• Academic challenges– Dissertation, other projects

• Next steps– Almost immediately, start applying for

fellowships, jobs…What do I want to do?

Fellowship year:Developmental challenges

• Transition from trainee to professional– Independent practice around the corner– Developing confidence in one’s voice

• Consolidating identity as a geropsychologist

• Clarifying career goals– Clinical (wide range), research, teaching, etc.

• Balancing professional and personal goals• Seeking employment

Additional challenges

• Often, move to a new city/town• Transitions in personal life

– New relationships, marriages, break-ups, long-distance relationships, babies, deaths

• 2nd career psychologists– Is it worth it? (time, money, job prospects)

• Work-life balance

Supervision and mentoring

• Johnson, B. W. (2007). Transformational supervision: When supervisors mentor. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38, 259-267.

• Supervision often occurs without mentoring, but can incorporate mentoring.

Supervision

“an intervention provided by a more senior member of a profession to a more junior member or members of that same profession. This relationship is evaluative, extends over time, and has the simultaneous purpose of enhancing the professional functioning of the more junior person, monitoring the quality of the professional services offered to the client…and serving as a gatekeeper of those who are to enter the particular profession.”

◦ Johnson, 2007, citing Bernard and Goodyear, 2004, Fundamentals of clinical supervision.

Mentoring

“a personal and reciprocal relationship in which a more experienced faculty member [or clinical supervisor] acts as a guide, role model, teacher, and sponsor of a less experienced student [or supervisee]. A mentor provides the protégé with knowledge, advice, counsel, challenge, and support in the protégé’s pursuit of becoming a full member of a particular profession.”

◦ Johnson, 2007, citing himself in 2006, On being a mentor: a guide for higher education faculty.

Mentoring functions

• Career– Address professional development and

performance

• Psychosocial– Address mentee’s sense of competence, identity,

and effectiveness

• Role modeling– Modeling ethical and professional behavior,

range of professional roles, attention to self-care

• Transactional supervision (hierarchical, technical)– Supervisor with greater knowledge and

experience– Supervisees must be ready to accept influence

from supervisor– Focus is clinical skill development and needs of

the patient– Supervisor provides direction, clear focus to

meetings

• Transactional supervision is starting point for most supervisory relationships

Transactional versus transformational supervision

• Transformational supervision (collaborative, mutual)◦ Mutual conversation versus expert/non-expert

hierarchy◦ Supervisor interested in supervisee’s welfare

and development, in addition to facilitating development of clinical competencies

◦ Requires competence and maturity in supervisor, who must balance supportive, coaching, and evaluative roles

• Entails supervisor’s emotional involvement, humility, sharing of oneself

• Supervisory relationships always include transactional elements.

• Transactional Transformational approaches along a continuum.

• Supervisory competence includes the ability to determine what elements are most appropriate for each supervisee, and when.

• “Transformational supervisors must gracefully balance advocacy and evaluation.”

Mentoring skills model

MENTEESPECIFIC SKILLS

MENTORSPECIFIC SKILLSAcquiring

Mentors

LearningQuickly

Showing Initiative

Following Through

Managingthe Relationship

Inspiring

Providing Corrective Feedback

Managing Risks

Opening Doors

Instructing/DevelopingCapabilities

Listening Actively

Identifying Goals& Current Reality

Building Trust

Encouraging

SHARED CORE SKILLS

Sense of Humor

Integrating mentoring into geropsychology supervision

• Support competency self-evaluation– Facilitate trainee development of

“metacompetence”: critical!– Encourage developmental/growth perspective

• Pikes Peak evaluation tool– Geropsychology knowledge and skill

assessment– Initial training needs assessment and track

development over training period– At http://www.uccs.edu/~cpgtp/

• Provide challenge and validation– Maintain high expectations, and…– Normalize anxiety/uncertainty in new roles– Encourage increasing independence

• Provide honest, and constructive, feedback– Create safe forum for discussion– Observe clinical and team work– Feedback can be difficult– Capitalize on trainee strengths

• Be a professional role model– Ethical behavior– Professional problem-solving– Managing difficult emotions– Self-care

• Be a geropsychologist role model– Passion and respect for older adults– Many ways to be a geropsychologist

• Engagement in multiple professional roles– Service to the field

• Respect diversity– Range of cultural, religious, educational, training

backgrounds– Range of experiences with aging, disability,

caregiving, grief– Range of professional goals and interests

• Question one’s own assumptions– Get to know the individual

• Express interest in and safe context to discuss how life experiences may influence professional development– IF the trainee wishes

• Be genuine, respectful, and humble– Convey curiosity and caring– Demonstrate self-awareness re: limits of one’s

own competence and seeking consultation• We never know everything!

– Protect supervision time– Maintain good boundaries– Ask trainees for feedback, and listen– Delight in unique interests and career paths of

trainees

• Provide professional socialization– Interns/Fellows have range of prior exposure to

geropsychology community and resources– Encourage joining 12-2, 20, PLTC, GSA– Encourage committee/project involvement– Highlight major journals, books, websites– Forward geropsychology resources, updates– Encourage presentation of work– Facilitate networking

What intern/fellow mentees should do

• Consider community of mentors• Might your supervisor be a mentor too?

– Trust your gut - Shared values? “Chemistry”?– Respect as role model?

• Mentoring relationships are reciprocal– Take active role/initiative, ask questions, communicate

needs, show interest in mentor

• Ask for and accept feedback– Work on recognition of strengths and growth areas

• Express appreciation to mentor– And, express if/how relationship could be more helpful

• Seek opportunities to mentor others

• “Those who are good mentors get incalculably more out of it than they put into it.”

• Anonymous mentor, from: Lee, A., Dennis, C., Campbell, P. (2007). Nature’s guide for mentors. Nature, 447(14), 791-797.

Acknowledgements

This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Boston VA Medical Center.

Thank you to 15 years of Interns and Fellows who helped me learn about supervision and mentoring, to my past/present colleagues at VA Boston who have done the same, and to my own mentors.