Why mentorship matters: students, staff and sustainability in interprofessional education.

As students in the Canadian education system, we have come to realize the true power that a great mentor can possess. Indeed, most health professional students can easily identify the reason they chose to pursue their particular discipline. While interest, lifestyle and anticipated employment satisfaction are all important motivating factors, it seems that there is almost always a positive role model or mentor that is instrumental in facilitating this career selection. This observation is also supported by the academic literature, as various studies have noted the importance of having a mentor in business, law and medicine (Lunding et al., 1978; Wallace, 2001; Jackson et al., 2003). The experience of the National Health Sciences Students’ Association (NaHSSA) in Canada, in fact, has shown that this observation is equally (if not especially) applicable for explaining why students choose to become leaders in interprofessional education (IPE) and why research has shown that their organizations can be so successful (Hoffman et al., forthcoming). Each instance of mentorship is perceived differently based on both the mentor and the person being mentored. In an academic setting, it is common to see mentorship as a quasi-contractual learning arrangement where a faculty member supervises a student in exchange for work on a project in his/her area. The clinical environment also features mentorship for health professional students whereby preceptors demonstrate clinical skills and role-model professional practices and ethical behaviour. While these types of mentorship are extremely valuable for students because they provide a structured mechanism for learning, such arrangements based on the concept of knowledge transfer and mimicry are not well-suited for student leadership in IPE, as the latter is something that faculty members and clinical preceptors have neither experience in doing nor could do even if they so desired. Rather, we have found that mentorship for student leaders requires engagement in students’ own values, guidance in keeping with the principles of selfdirected learning, and the creation of awareness for opportunities that facilitate selfdiscovery and maturation. The importance of these three constituent elements of mentorship must not be under emphasized as they are the most central aspects of the enabling environment that Hoffman et al. found to be essential for student leadership in IPE, which in turn has been shown to