Building and Inspiring a Team

First, Dr. Ramasamy recounts his journey to becoming a mentor for medical students. Initially, he found difficulty in finding peer relationships in academic medicine, so he started mentoring medical students. After seeing one of his mentees help out another student, he saw a benefit in building his own team in order to indirectly help more students outside of the traditional one-on-one mentoring model. He explains which qualities are most important for team members to have and has an open door policy and open communication with every team member. Farah adds that including many stages of trainees in the team with different skill sets is also useful. She emphasizes the importance of collaboration as the foundation for a productive team.

They also discuss ways to resolve conflicts, like communicating expectations about professional duties and checking in periodically and frequently with team members. Farah adds that mentors should know their mentees’ strengths and weaknesses and steer them away from opportunities that are not helpful. Dr. Ramasamy notes that having a good work life balance and encouraging students to do the same is also beneficial. Finally, they discuss the value in branding a team and the power of social media to reach out to new team members and patients.