E-mentoring: Does it have a place in medicine?

Mentoring for doctors is clearly an important issue and has been the focus of recent debate.1–3 We would like to add our own thoughts in one of the more controversial areas—e-mentoring. Over the past decade there has been a substantial increase in work into e-learning support, such as e-moderating,4 and other mentoring and support systems such as online communities of practice.5 It is not the intention here to explore these literatures but to concentrate specifically on one area—e-mentoring.

E-mentoring has been defined by Bierema and Merriam6 as “a computer mediated, mutually beneficial relationship between a mentor and a protégé which provides learning, advising, encouraging, promoting, and modeling, that is often boundaryless, egalitarian, and qualitatively different than face-to-face mentoring” (page 212). This definition has two elements that distinguish it from traditional mentoring—the boundaryless configuration and the egalitarian quality of the exchange. Although there has been much work on the effectiveness of non-electronic mentoring, less is understood about the dynamics, context, or results of e-mentoring.6

Many educators and organisations (including the medical profession) remain suspect about the new and growing field of e-mentoring. However, research by Preece and her colleagues7 has shown how the internet can be used to express empathy, particularly in online patient support communities. Furthermore, Griffiths8 has argued that online relationships can be just as real and intense as those in the offline world, and there should be little surprise that psychologists and educators are beginning to establish online therapeutic relationships. The argument also holds for e-mentoring. The time has come to embrace the new technology and to carry out evaluative research into this potentially innovative form …