WIM Lean In Circles: The Mentorship We’ve Been Waiting For
Author: Jennifer Caputo-Seidler, MD
Keywords: women in medicine, Lean In, mentorship, promotion
On August 15, 2023, Women in Medicine (WIM) announced a new partnership with LeanIn.Org to launch WIM Lean In Circles. The Lean In Circles are small groups that will meet regularly for peer mentorship. The press brief stated, “These circles will provide a safe and confidential space for women to discuss pertinent issues, develop leadership skills, and leverage the power of networking and mentorship.”
Mentorship is essential for academic productivity, personal development, and career guidance. Physicians who are mentored are more likely to publish, receive grants, and have overall improved career satisfaction. In my field of hospital medicine, there are proportionally few senior faculty to mentor the growing generation of junior faculty. Women hospitalists are underrepresented concerning measures of academic productivity vital to promotion, including publication authorship and speaking engagements. A previous study demonstrated that only 16% of divisions or sections of hospital medicine were led by women. Sadly, hospital medicine is not unique. Across specialties, few women are in senior academic ranks to mentor junior women.
Peer mentorship is a highly adaptable and alternative approach to traditional mentorship. In hospital medicine, where the workforce is ill-fitted for the conventional senior mentor-junior mentee dyad, peer mentorship fills a critical gap. Beyond hospital medicine, peer mentorship can be especially beneficial for women and those underrepresented in medicine who may struggle to find senior mentors from diverse backgrounds.
While our most accessible peer mentors are those within our home institutions, interinstitutional peer mentorship affords additional opportunities for sponsorship by creating access to networks beyond one’s own institution. Furthermore, the nonhierarchical peer relationship creates psychological safety to discuss challenges common to women in medicine, including parental leave, burnout, and sexual harassment in the workplace. The WIM Lean In Circles provide a platform to connect with peers from across the country and across facets of medicine.
Lack of mentorship exacerbates gender disparities across academic medicine. As the need for effective mentorship outpaces the pool of available senior mentors, innovative approaches are needed to support women in scholarly productivity and promotion. The WIM Lean In Circles are an exciting opportunity to leverage our collective power as we strive to close the gender gap.
About the Author: Jennifer Caputo-Seidler, MD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of South Florida. Her interests include medical education, narrative medicine, and civic engagement. Her writings have appeared on KevinMD, STATNews, and SheMD (Twitter: @jennifermcaputo).
