Overcoming the impeding influences of institutional and social factors in the mentoring process.

Overcoming the impeding influences of institutional and social factors in the mentoring process Commentary Having a mentor is critical to having a successful career in academic medicine and requires a diligent work in finding the appropriate mentor (1), but I would add that a certain amount of luck is needed as well, as that decission will certainly affect the success of a longtime work and the future of the mentee. In my case, the decission was stronlgy influenced by my mentor's previous work experience, work design and the quality of our relationship. Mentoring style and the simplicity in communication, matching visions and expectations , with all elements of good men-toring such as role modelling, guidance and advising (both on the resarch and on my personal growth and development), together with respect of the hierarchical nature of the mentor-mentee relationship marked the course of our mentoring process. Therefore, despite the fact that mentor-ing is not isolated from the outside world and social and institutional factors have different levels of interference in the process (2), I have found the personal factor to be crucial for the success of our mentoring relationship. Besides, it helped us overcome the influences of the institutional and social factors as well. As for the institutional level, my diser-tation was based on the Cochrane reviews and despite the assertive view of Cochrane reviews as original research and their official acceptance as a PhD thesis, during my men-toring process, my mentor and I encountered obstacles from colleagues in terms of missunderstanding of the value of such type of research. This in turn prolonged, but fortunately did not affect the final result of our mentoring process. Active engagement by the heads of our doctoral study, their exceptional work and efforts, regular advice, and great communication were of great help and are hugely responsible for the success of our mentoring process. Additionally, as a full time clinician it was sometimes difficult to combine my clinical work and the everyday needs and expectations of my patients with teaching and reasearch. Good relationship with my mentor together with regular support from