Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills
to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.
When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find
that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research
program.
Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.
However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.
For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians
the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.
Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.
I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it's such a pleasure to be talking with you today.
Last week, I feel like I started a little bit of a furor.
I talked about why the traditional mentoring system is broken, and honestly, I think I
recognized how many people have been hurt by the system, but I think I wasn't prepared
for how many people have actually experienced hurt.
I just want to pause and just say, now that I'm a mentor, I just want to apologize on
behalf of all mentors out there.
To some extent, I don't necessarily have the right to do that because it's like, hey, I
probably haven't interacted with you and probably have not necessarily caused or been part of
your pain, but I just do want to stop and acknowledge the many hurts that happen in
our relationships with mentors.
I just acknowledge the fact that many times we have expectations that are not met, and
many times we wish our mentors would be more for us.
We wish they would do so much more, and we are disappointed.
We feel like the way our careers are now would be different if only we had had the support
that we needed.
I want to acknowledge that mentoring is necessary to help you move forward, and not having a
mentor can leave what feels like a big void in your life, especially not having the kind
of mentor that just takes you all the way through can make you feel inadequate, unwanted,
unsupported in the system.
I do want to acknowledge very specially women and underrepresented faculty in the academy
who many times have more issues with mentoring compared to other faculty.
I just want to say, hey, it's not your fault, and there are challenges that are beyond your
control, and you're going to be okay, but you've been hurt, you've had challenges, and
I just want to acknowledge the pain and the suffering that have come as a result of it,
and I want to say that it is real, it is valid, and I'm sorry that you've experienced these
things in the academy.
And I want to bring hope and healing to you through this episode, because I realized that
what I spent a long time doing last time was really setting up the challenge, and there
are many challenges, but I don't want you to focus on the challenge, because what you
focus on does grow, but I want you to focus on your power and your ability to fix the
challenges.
Okay?
So that's what this episode is about.
It's about you taking ownership, it's about you working in light of the challenging and
the broken systems.
So today's episode, I'm talking about what you can do about these broken mentoring systems.
You know, when it comes to hurt, I want to share an episode of hurt and not to show up
a mentor in any way, but just to say that many times, you know, your being young makes
you vulnerable to hurt.
So I had a mentor who was really lovely and so kind.
I mean, this is a lovely mentor.
And throughout my career, if anybody meets me and asks about this mentor, I will tell
you that this mentor is really, really an amazing and outstanding mentor.
This mentor knows their stuff, and they succeeded.
There is an excellent and amazing scientist.
One of the things I struggled with when I first started with said I was a people pleaser.
I really needed people to be happy with me.
And this mentor was hard to please.
And this mentor would get really mad if they felt that they had been crossed in any way.
And I think it speaks to this mentors insecurities, but I didn't know that then.
So there I was trying so hard to please this mentor.
And for the most part, I would succeed.
I would do something and get a well done.
But then when I didn't succeed, it would just be like a nightmare outburst of anger.
And I was very sensitive to that.
I've always been sensitive to outbursts of anger.
And this was a mentor that I looked up to that I really respected, and I never wanted
them to be angry.
So there I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, how can I make things better?
And then I would try harder.
And then the mentor would be happy again.
And so really, to be honest, it started becoming like a cycle of abuse.
I got anxious.
I got nervous.
I got worried because I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me when I came into that
mentor's office.
Anyway, so I say all that to say that I'm okay now.
I'm healed.
It was a big, big, big source of psychological stressors and gosh, it was a really big challenge.
And I got help.
I'll tell you that I got help because those are situations in which it's hard to try to
come out of yourself, especially when you feel like it's something that you look up
to and respect very much.
But I got help.
And I'm no longer in a position anymore to be treated in such a way that this amazing
mentor and again, you're like, wait a minute, this mentor can't be that amazing if they
hurt you.
People are just people.
Okay.
And in reality, if people have trouble managing anger towards you, it's not about you.
It's about them.
It's about the fact that they have trouble managing anger in general.
And if they have an outburst of anger at you, they're having outburst of anger at other
people.
And so maybe this mentor needed anger management.
I don't know.
But it wasn't me.
It was really about the mentor and what they needed to deal with.
And so this is someone who's highly successful and under so much stress and having trouble
with anger.
And to be honest, so many of us in the academy under so much pressure, we don't really get
to judge people.
We just don't.
We don't judge ourselves and we don't judge others as well.
And so I just want to encourage you to not judge this mentor in the story that I told
you, but just to recognize that that was my story of deep hurt in the academy where I
thought I depended on you to help me.
And instead you turned me.
Well, they didn't turn me.
I turned myself in the process of that experience into a nervous wreck.
And I just thought it was important to share that story because many of you have similar
or worse stories of horrible, horrible experiences at the hands of mentors.
And I just want to, I just, again, want to pause and say they are real.
They are hurtful.
For some of you are like, I will never do academics again.
I hope you'll change your mind.
But I do want to recognize and acknowledge that those kinds of experiences can be hurtful.
Okay.
Now I want to give you tools.
I want you to heal your hurts.
And I know that this one podcast doesn't necessarily heal your hurts, but I want you to start the
journey of your healing.
And so that involves talking with people, talking with other people, processing your
trauma if needed, getting, getting therapy.
But I also want you to have a bag of tools when you're ready.
So it may be that you're not ready right now.
You're still healing from trauma, but when you're ready, this podcast will be here for
you.
And I want you to have a bag of tools that can help you to succeed despite your broken
mentoring relationships.
Okay.
That felt so heavy.
It's like, oh, gosh, there's so much pain.
Okay.
I had to do the big sigh.
Okay.
Number one, the tool you need is a tool of recognition.
This is important.
We talked about it at length last week about how the system is broken and how it's actually
structurally foundationally broken.
And I have to tell you, if the foundation of the building is messed up, it doesn't matter
how beautiful the building is.
Oh my gosh, it doesn't matter how amazing it is.
It doesn't matter that, you know, somebody bought like a really new helipad and now we're
going to be able to use the helipad daily and somebody brought in these new innovations
and the building is green.
If the foundation is broken, the entire building is actually condemned.
It's a matter of time before it totally falls apart.
And actually in academic medicine, if we're going to go with that metaphor, the building
is already falling apart.
We can see, we can see the cracks in the foundation.
We can see light fixtures falling.
We know that this building is falling apart.
Anyway, so the foundation is broken.
And the reason that's a tool in your toolkit is because now you're going to lower your
expectations for a building of the broken foundation to serve your needs.
Actually, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to get out of the building.
Yes.
Let's reframe that.
The foundation is broken.
You see things falling apart around you.
And the number one tool in your toolkit is get out of the building.
Okay, this is a safety issue.
Can I just, can I just pause and say, this is a safety issue.
You're in a building.
It's falling apart because the foundation is broken.
Get out of the building.
Okay.
What does that mean for you?
Stop for stop focusing on one person as the source of your success.
Okay.
I know we said this last week, it bears repeating again, and this is the number one tool, tool
in your toolkit is to get out of the broken building by stopping asking one person to
be your mentor, by stopping saying it all depends on this one person and by developing
the systems that help you move forward.
Okay.
So you're getting out of the broken building of the one mentor, guru mentor, you'll take
care of all of my needs mentor.
You're now getting into the, into the building of creating systems that help you succeed.
Now we talked about the creating systems last week, so I'm not going to go into much more
detail about that, but what I do want you to recognize is that there is a system that
exists at your institution and if not at your institution, beyond your institution, I'm
going to mention a couple of those resources here.
So pride the programs to increase research among faculty who are from diverse backgrounds.
I said it wrong.
Research is from diverse, diverse backgrounds.
It's pride.
And there are a couple of purses across the country.
If you are someone from an underrepresented program, the background, you should take care
of that or you should look into that.
Another program is the NRMN, the National Research Mentoring Network.
That's I believe is open to all faculty.
You take advantage of that.
If you have a society like the American site of hematology, I know the American site of
nephrology.
Oh, I definitely know the American Heart Association.
Whatever your specialty, if a society that has resources to facilitate research.
Okay.
All right.
So whatever happens, there is a system that exists either at your institution or within
your national society or at large, right?
There are systems that exist to support your research development.
What I want you to do is figure out what those systems are and what resources they have.
I will tell you that the resources they have are so many.
Sometimes you look at them, you're like, I don't know what I need.
It's too overwhelming.
I'm going to just pause and say, we don't do overwhelm.
We just don't do it.
We just, we just, we just don't do it.
We're just like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be overwhelmed.
I learned that from one of my mentors, Dr. Uda.
So I don't know who she learned it from, but that's, that's someone who she, she taught
me that she's like, we just don't do it.
Or like, I'm not going to be overwhelmed.
I'm just going to say, what's the next step?
And I'm going to take it and do it.
All right.
But the first thing is you're going to look at the systems that exist for you.
And I want to pause and say that these systems exist for you.
They are for you.
I don't care whose name the systems have on them.
And sometimes you may be like, well, they only help underrepresented minorities.
Okay.
Still call and say, Hey, I'm not an underrepresented minority.
Are there any resources that are publicly available that I can access?
There will always be a resource you can access.
Or maybe you are, you know, the, the, maybe it's a resource for women.
You're like, well, I'm not a woman.
Okay.
So there are many resources that are not just for women, but if this is the resource that
you really feel like you need, call and say, Hey, I see that you make all these resources
available to women.
Are there any that are available publicly?
And to be honest, most of those resources are available publicly.
So there's no resource you cannot ask access and support of your career development.
But what's more likely to happen is that you're going to be overwhelmed.
You're going to be like, Oh my gosh, there's so many resources.
One that I just remembered is the climb CLIMB program at Northwestern.
Oh my goodness, they have a wealth of resources.
Okay.
So there's a wealth of resources out there.
Climb, we've talked about pride.
I've talked about the NRMN and I've talked about your national societies.
Okay.
I'll put all these in the, in the show notes.
Okay.
Now, one thing you need to recognize is that what you're likely going to have is just an
overwhelming list of resources.
What I want you to do is just write a list of five.
These are five resources that are systems that support my research development.
I'm going to take advantage of these five.
You're gonna start with one because you're just going to take advantage of one.
Don't, don't, don't.
There are a million resources.
You can narrow it down to five that you need and then you're going to select one.
You're going to run with that.
Okay.
So the very first thing is to get out of the burning building or to get out the building
whose foundation is broken by removing your focus from one mentor as a source of all your
mentoring needs and working to develop systems that support you.
Okay.
So part of the system is saying what resources already exist and pursuing those resources.
Okay, so systems.
You're going to ask about establishing systems.
The second thing is community.
Okay.
You cannot do this alone.
You cannot succeed alone.
It's like a little newborn baby.
If they did not have a mother or father or some other concerned person to take care of
them, they would not do well.
And that's why I'm so glad that there are resources to support children when they're
first born and not able to care for themselves.
If you are early on in your career, you don't even yet know what you don't need or what
you need.
You have no idea.
And you do need people to help support you.
You don't need just the one mentoring parent member.
Our first tool bag in the toolkit was we got out of that thing.
We got out of that thing.
Well, what we do need is community, right?
It's a community of support.
And what I want you to do is to find your community.
Okay.
Find your community.
Now, let me tell you who's going to be in your community, okay?
Because I know that for some of you, you're fixated because your single parent is not
available for you.
That's your mentor.
Your mentor has not been available for you.
And you're still fixated on that one mentor who won't do for you what you think they
should do.
I need you to let it go.
And as you're ready to let it go, I want you to think about who you need in your community.
Okay.
I'm talking to you about five people you need in your community.
Number one is you need mentors who've gone ahead of you.
Okay.
Now I'm talking about a mentoring.
Actually, I'm saying the word mentors when I'm telling you to not focus on one mentor,
but I'm really saying you need multiple mentors, but that's number three.
So we'll get to it in a minute.
Number two is the community, right?
So the community, I need you to find people who have gone ahead of you.
Okay.
That's what I mean.
People who have gone ahead of you.
And then you don't have to look at them as mentors, but they've gone ahead of you in
whatever way.
Now, here's the thing.
Here's the thing about people who've gone ahead of you.
They may not be older than you.
They may not be more advanced than you, whatever advanced means.
They may not have gray hair.
They may be younger than you.
They may still be in medical school.
They just may be.
But they've gone ahead of you in areas in which you want to succeed.
That's the criteria for the members of this, these members of your community.
There are people who have gone ahead of you in a way you want to succeed.
Now, again, they don't have to be one person fulfilling criteria of all the things you
ever want to do.
They just need to be ahead of you in anything.
For example, you've not submitted any manuscript yet for publication.
You need somebody who's ahead of you in doing that.
It could be a med student who submitted 20 manuscripts for publication, who's highly
published because in their prior life, they ran an epidemiology research program.
And now they're like, you know what?
I want to go back to med school.
That's why you can't judge a book by its cover.
Okay?
Okay.
So you're going to choose members of your community who are ahead of you in a specific
area in which you have a need.
Now don't look at your career and say, I want someone who's an associate professor.
It's not specific.
I want you to be as specific as possible.
I want somebody who's good at submitting manuscripts for publication.
You're going to have members of that community.
Okay.
You're going to have members of your community who've gone ahead of you in submitting publications.
You're like, oh, I need to submit grants for funding.
You're going to have members of your community who've done that successfully.
They don't have to be super far advanced.
They just have to have done it successfully.
What you're going to build in your community, the first group you're going to build in your
community is a group of people who've gone ahead of you.
Okay.
That's the first group you're going to build in your community.
The second group you're going to build in your community is you're going to build the
community of people who are doing what you're doing, who are at the same level as you, who
are doing the same things.
Now in this area, you can be broad.
They don't have to be doing the same things as you in like, you know, one area.
They can be in multiple areas.
Maybe there are people like you who are just making the transition from fellowship to faculty.
Maybe there are people like you who are just making the transition to start submitting
grants.
There are people like you who are assistant professors.
Choose that community.
It doesn't matter, but they do what you're doing.
So that means not all clinicians, right?
It's not all clinicians want to lead programs through scholarship.
Not all clinicians want to lead research programs.
And there's no good or bad choice here.
We're just making different choices.
I'm talking about a community that's going to support your aspirations in leading research.
Okay.
A community that's going to support your aspirations in leading research.
Okay.
All right.
And the next group that you need within this community is a group of people who haven't
reached where you are.
Okay.
This third group is very important.
I think I know I said I started with five, but I'm just going to limit it to three because
I still have more things to tell you.
Three in this three.
So the third group, and this is the third group, is a group that's coming after you.
So there are people who are ahead of you.
There are people who are at your level, and then there are people who are coming behind
you.
And the reason you need this group is because instead of focusing on what you don't have,
you're going to start to focus on what you have so that you can give it to other people
who are coming behind you.
And it may be that you're like, well, I don't have much.
I can't really mentor anybody.
You've done something.
You've been successful in something.
And maybe you've been successful in publishing at least one manuscript.
You've been successful.
And now you can teach somebody else to publish like you have.
And if you're like, it was just a case report, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
That is exactly what you're going to help somebody along with.
So you can build community.
OK, so the first thing is you're going to develop systems, and you're going to look
around at your systems.
And second thing is you're going to develop community.
OK, what's the third thing?
The third thing you're going to do is now you're going to develop mentoring networks.
Now, remember you have a whole community, right?
And so going back to the community thing, don't feel like you need to build the whole
community today.
Don't feel like, oh, my gosh, I don't have members of the community.
You know, whatever you're going to think about, don't think about it.
But what you're going to do is within that whole community that you've identified, now
identify your mentoring networks.
OK, what do I mean by mentoring networks?
Who is the person or who are the list of people that you're going to give your early manuscript
ideas to to give you feedback on?
Now these are not people who say, oh, yeah, you should submit this manuscript, but people
who will look at your ideas and say, you know what I think would be help if you add this
right now, people will tear you down.
You got to be selective about your networks.
And now you're going to select who are the four people in my group that can help me when
I'm going to write and when I want to develop a manuscript idea, they're just going to help
me with the idea generation.
Does this make sense to you?
Does this help you?
You know, what do you think is going to be the greatest impact of this manuscript?
Those kinds of things.
Then you're going to develop the next list of people who you can go to when you need
major career advice.
And now major career advice is a really broad category.
But I'm talking in specificities.
I just I just need to pause and tell you that I'm distracted right now because I'm in New
York.
It's a different background for those of you who can see my video.
And for those of you who cannot.
And I'm overwhelmed by the amount of noise that just pervades New York.
And you may not hear it because my editor is awesome and will remove most of these sounds.
But the noises are distracting.
And I just want to pause and say to some extent, I'm distracted by the noises of the heater
and I'm distracted by the noises of birds that are gathered outside the window right
now.
OK, having said that, I can now release them and go back to talking about your mentor networks.
OK, so now you have a list of a group of people who will help you come up with like a plan
whenever you're going to submit a manuscript for publication.
You're going to say, I'm going to get going to help me figure out like who might be the
best, you know, the best four journals or which journals may be the best for to submit
to and what should be my tier one, tier two, tier three.
That might be a list of librarians who are skilled at doing that kind of thing.
So your mentoring networks don't have to involve clinician scientists.
OK, this is really good because your mentoring networks to be non clinicians who have resources
that help support you.
OK, so those are two examples.
Just make a list of people.
Right.
Again, remember, we're we've gone out of the building, so there's not one person that does
anything for us.
There's a list of people who can't.
OK, that's that's a great is your mentoring networks.
OK, now the fourth thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to develop a
needs assessment for yourself.
OK, now this sounds pretty fancy.
It sounds pretty formal, but it's just saying, what do I need?
What do I need to succeed?
For some of you who are starting really early, you're like, well, I don't yet know what I
need to succeed.
And for the rest of you, you're like, well, I have an idea, but there's probably much
more that I don't know about.
OK, so the two parts to this piece, one is getting the information.
It's like you go to somebody who has gone ahead of you.
Remember, you have a whole community and you have within your community people who've done
what you've done, not the whole career, but just a piece of it.
And you say, hey, I'm just starting out in this area and I see that you succeeded in
this area.
What are the things I need to know that I may not be aware of?
Wow, that's powerful because they're going to tell you things that you don't already
know.
They're going to tell you some things you already know, and then they're going to tell
you things you don't already know.
You're going to make up a list of your needs based on what you didn't know that you needed,
but you need.
They're going to give you this information.
OK, and then you're also going to now that you have the information, now you're going
to say, based on all this information I have about what's needed to succeed in this way,
what do I need to grow in this way?
One of the things we all mostly have to grow in, especially as clinicians who are making
this transition to lead research, is writing grants.
What do you need as a grant writer?
I mean, it seems easy, right?
You sit down and you write the grant.
Well, much bigger than that, right?
Much bigger.
And when you go around to people who successfully write in grants, they tell you what's needed.
Let me give you an example.
I sat down with one of my mentors.
I have many, but this particular mentor is a mentor in a very specific career development
award program that I'm part of.
And we talked about a trial, clinical trial goal that I have.
And in asking about the things that I need, one of the things she helped me recognize,
she was like, you need to start writing the clinical trial protocol.
I was like, well, I'm not ready for the clinical trial protocol.
I'm still collecting preliminary data.
And she's like, no.
The thing about the clinical trial protocol is it helps you to start to think in advance
of the things you need leading up to the protocol.
That was so powerful for me.
I was like, okay, I don't need this yet, but I'm going to start working on writing it so
that it helps me keep in mind my end goal.
So I'm very focused on where I'm going.
But she was the one who helped me recognize this.
So now, I now recognize in my niece assessment that I need an example of a clinical trial
protocol of the kind of trial I want to do, right?
There are many clinical trial protocols that exist.
But I had a very specific type of trial that I want to accomplish, right?
A very specific kind of trial.
And so I asked somebody who's done that trial, and I said, can you share with me a clinical
trial protocol in this area?
I didn't know I needed it.
I thought maybe it was something I would think about years before.
In fact, it had never even entered into my consciousness to ask about it.
But now that I had the conversation, I got information, and now I know that that's a
list of things that's on my needs list.
Okay, so that's the needs assessment list.
You ask people questions about what you need to know or what you're missing.
They tell you, you create a list of what you need, what skills you need, what resources
you need, what networks you need to access to be able to accomplish your goals.
Okay?
Okay, so let's recap again.
Number one, we build systems.
Number two, we build community.
Number three, we create mentoring networks.
And number four, we create a needs assessment.
Okay, number five.
Number five is, wow, the most important.
The most important.
Actually, I'm thinking, is this the most important?
Well, to be honest, you've already been doing the things.
I don't want you to focus on this one thing, but it's really important.
Number four, gosh.
Number four, number four.
Is it number four or number five?
Number five.
Okay, is to develop a plan for your forward motion.
In the traditional mentoring network, I mean, the traditional mentoring system that didn't
work for us, we depended on one person to tell us where to go.
And in this particular new system that we're embracing, we are deciding where we go.
Because based on the information that you've gathered as you were creating your needs assessment,
based on the systems that you've accessed that you know are available for clinicians
leading research programs, based on the community you've built of people who are ahead of you,
people who are on your peer level, people who are coming up behind you, and based on
your needs assessment, you now make a plan on where you're going.
This is so important.
And I was going to say it's the most important, but the reason I paused and stopped is recognizing
that executing on the plan may be more important than doing the planning itself.
But it's hard to execute when you have no plan.
That's why planning is important, right?
Plans are really important, not necessarily because of the plans themselves, but because
of the process it takes to get to the plans, because of what it means to have a plan that
you create.
Now, I'm going to pause and say that planning is something that I hope has come up for you
in any of your mentoring relationships, but even if it hasn't, there are different tools
available to help people plan, and there's like the individual, I always say it wrong,
it's the IPDP, Individual Professional Development Plan, right?
It's a big document, it's got lots of components, and to be honest, it can be overwhelming.
And I don't necessarily care what tool you use.
I am not asking you to choose a specific tool.
I'm not even recommending a specific tool.
What I am asking you to do is to develop a plan.
A simple plan looks like in five years, yeah, you should have a five-year plan, and then
you should have at least a one-year plan.
That's what they tell you.
And I'm not for or against five-year plans.
I'm saying sometimes your planning is either over ambitious or it's not ambitious enough.
But what is important is that you should have a plan.
What do you want your career to look like in five years?
And five years is helpful because it pushes things out far enough into the future where
you don't feel like, oh my gosh, I need to try to get this all done.
But it's like, what do you want your career to look like?
Maybe like me, you start out as a fully, fully, full-time clinician.
That's how I started.
I started 80% of my time was seeing patients, and 80% is really a full-time clinician.
In private practice, nobody sees patients five days a week.
Actually, some people do, but in general, it's like that person came to mind, I was
like, yep, some people see patients five days a week.
But in general, people are not necessarily seeing patients five days a week in private
practice.
So I was a full-time clinician.
I'm getting ahead of myself here.
But okay, maybe in five years, your goal is that I want to have funding to support 50%
of my time in research.
That's doable within five years.
And so you write that down, that's your big, hairy, audacious goal.
In five years, I want to go from being a full-time clinician to being funded 50% for my research.
Now, I would say that you want to go with a bigger goal.
You want to be funded more.
You want a career development award.
In five years, I want to be funded on a career development award to support my research.
That's great.
That's part of your plan.
It's a big goal on your plan.
Now what are the steps to get there?
If I'm going to be funded 75% on a career development award, well, I do need to apply
for a career development award.
Like, okay, great.
Now I need support developing a proposal, and I need to figure out what research project
I want to use as my proposal for submission.
And then you're going to say, well, okay, I'm going to want to submit a proposal on
this topic.
Let's say it's TTP, thrombotic, thrombocytopenic, purpura.
You're like, well, I'm going to need some preliminary data.
Okay.
What projects do I need to finish to take to the finish line so that I can have some
preliminary data?
Or who are the people I've worked with or who may be at my institution or elsewhere
who have worked in this area that might have a data set that I could acquire some data
from?
And so based on this, you can now say, okay, well, my next step is to talk to this researcher
and acquire the data set.
Okay.
You have a plan.
Now, here's the thing about plan.
Here's the thing about plans.
The most important thing about plans is not the plans themselves, but it's the process
of planning.
And plans are worthless, but the planning is what's powerful.
So I say that to say that you're going to make plans and you're going to be like, oh,
my gosh, or you're going to be afraid to make plans.
You're going to be paralyzed because you're going to be like, oh, the plans are not perfect.
It's not about perfection.
It's just about making the plans.
And at any point in time, you can take the plans and say, I'm going to make a new set
of plans.
Okay.
Now, this is not an invitation to just keep making plans with no goal, but it's just to
tell you that you're not making a commitment for life.
You're not getting married.
You're not promising to marry anybody with these plans.
You just have a blueprint in your hand how you're going to move forward.
Okay.
Those are the five tools that I want to give you today.
Number one, again, we said creating systems or engaging the systems that are already available
to you.
Number two is creating the community or finding the community that you already have access
to those who are ahead of you, those who are your peers, those who are coming up behind
you.
Number three was developing and understanding your list of mentoring networks.
Who do you go to when you need one thing versus the other versus the other?
They don't have to be clinicians, scientists.
They just have to be people who can help you move forward in these ways.
Number four is that you create your own needs assessment to say, well, what do I need now
that I have identified all these things?
What do I need?
You go around and you ask people.
They give you information.
You make it part of your list of things that you need.
And then number five is create a plan.
Create a plan.
Okay.
The next episode, I'm going to talk to you about what to do with your plan and what kinds
of things you should be thinking about in your plan.
And I'm just so excited about that episode.
And anyway, somebody else needs to hear about this.
Somebody else needs to let go of the traditional mentoring system, be healed from it, be released
from its brokenness.
And I invite you to be part of their healing by sharing this episode with them.
And imagine if every researcher, every clinician who's aspiring to lead research, let's go
of this whole concept of one person as the mentor for their lives.
Imagine how much ownership we could have of our own careers, how much power we would have
to engage other people that traditionally we had not engaged to be part of a mentoring
networks would not be so awesome.
It would be so awesome.
And you can be part of that change by supporting their listening to this podcast episode.
So please share.
And I look forward to talking with you again the next time.
Thank you for listening.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic
clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they
have a mentor.
If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.
Someone else needs to hear it.
So take a minute right now and share it.
As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation
of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.