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Life in academics often seems like an endless series of transitions: from medical student to intern, from junior resident to senior, from fellow to faculty, from junior faculty to senior, and sometimes from local leader to national figure. Looking back now on my own career and those of others, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that we are ultimately defined more by how we manage those transitions, and how we treat the people we meet along the way, than we are by the professional accomplishments that bring us recognition and awards.

Background Mentoring is considered a fundamental component of career success and satisfaction in academic medicine. However, there is no national standard for faculty mentoring in academic emergency medicine and a paucity of literature on the subject. Objectives To conduct a descriptive study of faculty mentoring programs and practices in academic departments of emergency medicine. Methods An electronic survey instrument was sent to 135 department chairs of emergency medicine (EM) in the United States. The survey queried faculty demographics, mentoring practices, structure, training, expectations, and outcome measures. Chi-square and Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests were used to compare metrics of mentoring effectiveness (i.e., number of publications and NIH funding) across mentoring variables of interest. Results Thirty-nine of 135 departments completed the survey, with a heterogeneous mix of faculty classifications. While only 43.6% of departments had formal mentoring programs, many augmented faculty mentoring with project or skills based mentoring (66.7%), peer mentoring (53.8%), and mentoring committees (18%). Although the majority of departments expected faculty to participate in mentoring relationships, only half offered some form of mentoring training. The mean number of faculty publications per department per year was 52.8, and eleven departments fell within the top 35 NIH funded EM departments. There was an association between higher levels of perceived mentoring success and both higher NIH funding (p=0.022) and higher departmental publications rates (p=0.022). In addition, higher NIH funding was associated with mentoring relationships that were assigned (80%), self-identified (20%), or mixed (22%), (p=0.026). Conclusions Our findings help to characterize the variability of faculty mentoring in EM, identify opportunities for improvement, and underscore the need to learn from other successful mentoring programs. This study can serve as a basis to share mentoring practices and stimulate conversation around strategies to improve faculty mentoring in EM. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.