FPM mentoring program
Our mentoring program aims to support pain medicine trainees and fellows during their training and/or early post-fellowship years.
Established FPM fellows can volunteer to provide guidance and support to a junior colleague during their training and early years of fellowship. As a mentor, you can expect to give guidance and support on a wide range of issues, from clinical problems to relationships with colleagues and stress management to career options. For mentees, the mentoring relationship accelerates learning from experience and helps to achieve positive, lasting change to reach personal and professional goals.
Using the FPM mentoring program
The mentoring program is an informal, web-based facility that enables trainees and new fellows to access details of more senior fellows willing to act as mentors. Our team can help to put you in touch with a mentor of your choice. Once a connection has been made, we have no oversight of the mentoring relationship.
- You're responsible for defining the nature, duration and terms of your mentoring relationship from the outset.
- Once established, we expect you to maintain your mentoring relationship without external input.
- We recommend meeting in person at regular, predetermined intervals. However, each relationship is different and we recognise face-to-face contact might not be possible.
- Mentors may decline a mentoring invitation.
- Mentors should have no more than two mentees.
- Either participant may terminate the relationship at any time.
- The FPM mentoring program officer is available to offer suggestions or mediations as required. Contact them via the faculty office.
Find a mentor
Review the information below and email us with the name of your preferred mentor from the list provided.
Purpose of mentoring
- Sharing know-how at a strategic level.
- Assistance in identifying realistic career goals and planning to achieve them.
Benefits of having a mentor
- Receive honest and informal feedback.
- Encouragement with setting and achieving goals.
- Help to clarify and enhance career direction and advancement.
- Enhancement of networking opportunities.
- Increased communication about what's happening in other areas of pain medicine.
- Receive advice on how to balance work and other responsibilities and set professional priorities.
- Obtain knowledge of informal rules for advancement.
List of mentors
See the full list of FPM mentors.
Become a mentor
Review the information below and email us if you'd like to be a mentor. Please note that the mentoring program officer will review your application before your details are listed on our mentor database.
Purpose of mentoring
- Sharing know-how at a strategic level.
- Assisting your mentee in identifying realistic career goals and planning to achieve them.
- Being available as a source of advice and support for junior colleagues as they encounter new clinical and professional challenges. This is particularly relevant to mentors of newer fellows who practice in remote locations.
Benefits of mentoring
Discussing issues with your mentee will help you:
- Renew and develop your communication skills.
- Expand your network of colleagues.
- Give you the opportunity to reflect on your own practices and goals.
- Get an insight into what is happening with the new generation of specialist pain medicine physicians.
Requirements
Mentors must:
- Have been an FFPMANZCA for at least a year.
- Be actively involved in pain medicine.
- Preferably practicing as part of a multidisciplinary team with no restrictions on practice.