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Mentoring helps talented people sustain performance over the long term.

Mentors are particularly important in high-pressure fields.

Mentees should watch for red flags of mentorship malpractice.

Mentoring gets romanticized. We talk about "taking someone under your wing," as if mentorship unfolds naturally between one wise senior person and one grateful junior person, resulting in a tidy arc of professional growth.

If you’ve ever mentored (or been mentored) in healthcare, you know how often that story falls apart in the real world. While mentoring in general takes finesse, mentoring in a high-pressure work field where stakes are high, decisions must be fast, and mistakes can have serious consequences takes something more.

That’s why Ruth Gotian, chief learning officer at Weill Cornell Medical School, decided to follow up her first book on general mentoring in business with a book directed at healthcare. Mentoring in Healthcare: The Definitive Guide to Cultivating Individual and Organizational Success by Ruth Gotian, Vineet Chopra, and Sanjay Saint is a practical, structured, occasionally bracing guide for mentors who mean business. And for mentees who are tired of guessing what “good mentoring” is supposed to look like, the book specifically teaches them how to deal with mentoring malpractice.

Mentoring is complicated in healthcare

Anyone who has watched The Pitt on HBO or the recent reboot of Scrubs has a sense of the ever-mounting pressure on doctors to see more patients faster.........

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