Three Good Questions for Faculty and Their Mentors in Support of Academic Career Development

Faculty mentorship is essential for a successful career in academic medicine, and effective support includes a commitment between a faculty member and mentor to navigate through competing interests and priorities. Many faculty mentorship programs have been described. However, the program content, including guidance tools and guiding questions, are less often defined. To address this gap, the authors draw on their faculty mentor-mentee experience in academic medicine to propose a set of guiding questions in this Commentary called “3 good questions.” This supplemental tool encourages mentors to ask of their mentees: (1) Are you doing what you love? (2) Are you making it count twice? (3) Are you staying focused? These questions can be incorporated during mentorship discussion sessions and can be answered in a stepwise approach to reflect, confirm, and explore a mentee’s needs in the short- and long-term for a successful career in academic medicine.