Dario Sambunjak

Mentoring: What's in a Name?

MANY INDIVIDUALS MAY KNOW THAT MENTOR IS a character from The Odyssey, but perhaps only a few are aware that, according to Homer’s epic poem, it is not Mentor who fulfills the duty of advisor and guardian to Odysseus’ son Telemachus. Rather, it is Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom, who takes Mentor’s form and actually does the job of helping the young man. As if cursed by Dionysus, the god of illusion, the term mentor continues to be the source of confusion to this day. The words mentor and mentoring undeniably have considerable rhetorical strength. It is flattering to be called someone’s mentor. Having a mentoring program increases the reputation of an institution. But these terms are often used when others would be more appropriate. Mentoring should not be confused with peer support, tutoring, teaching, coaching, supervising, advising, counseling, sponsoring, rolemodeling, or preceptoring. The conceptual confusion is common but harmless in everyday communication and perhaps irritating in formal documents and policies—but it is detrimental in scientific discourse. For example, only 4 of 34 questionnaire studies identified in a systematic review of academic mentorship in medicine offered the participants a clear definition of mentors or mentorship. Because study participants had to decide the meaning of these terms, it is not clear what kind of relationship or process was actually explored. The conceptual diversity of this situation creates an error variance that limits the ability to summarize research findings and estimate the effects of mentoring. Although it is probably unrealistic to expect that a single uniform definition of mentoring could be established, the mentoring literature provides enough insights to dispel most of the terminological confusion. A supportive or developmental relationship can be rightfully termed functional mentoring if it has certain structural, interactional, and temporal features.

Quantification of Authors’ Contributions and Eligibility for Authorship: Randomized Study in a General Medical Journal

BACKGROUNDAssessment of authorship contribution is often based on unreliable questionnaires.OBJECTIVETo assess if the use of different formats for the disclosure of authorship contributions influences authors’ compliance with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).DESIGNRandomized study.PARTICIPANTS AND MEASUREMENTSEight hundred sixty-five authors of 181 manuscripts submitted to the Croatian Medical Journal from January to July 2005 were randomly allocated into 2 groups: 456 authors (94 manuscripts) received an ordinal rating form to rate their contributions to the submitted manuscript in 12 categories on a scale from 0 (none) to 4 (full), whereas 409 authors (87 manuscripts) received a binary rating form to tick the categories in which they made a contribution.RESULTSThe ordinal rating form identified twice as many authors (87.9%) as meeting the ICMJE criteria than the binary rating form (39.2%, P < .001). The group answering the ordinal rating form also had 5 times more manuscripts (71.6%) with all authors meeting the ICMJE criteria than the binary rating form group (15.5%, P < .001). The fraction of authors who reported contributions on each item on the binary rating form was similar to the fraction of authors who reported at least moderate participation to the same items on the ordinal rating form except “Final approval of the article.”CONCLUSIONSOrdinal scales for reporting authors’ contributions to manuscripts were more sensitive than tick boxes for assessing the appropriateness of authorship. The exception is “Final approval of the article,” which should be considered a dichotomous variable and may not be appropriate for the ICMJE definition of authorship.

Perceptions of authorship criteria: effects of student instruction and scientific experience

Objective: To analyse medical students’, graduate students’ and doctors’ and medical teachers’ perceptions of research contributions as criteria for authorship in relation to the authorship criteria defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Design: Medical students with (n = 152) or without (n = 85) prior instruction on ICMJE criteria, graduate students/doctors (n = 125) and medical teachers (n = 112) rated the importance of 11 contributions as authorship qualifications. They also reported single contributions eligible for authorship, as well as acceptable combinations of two or three qualifying contributions. Results: Conception and design, Analysis and interpretation and Drafting of article formed the most important cluster in all four groups. Students without prior instruction rated Critical revision and Final approval lower than the other three groups. “Final approval” was a part of the least important cluster in all groups except among students with instruction. Conclusions: Conception and design, Analysis and interpretation and Drafting of article were recognised as the most important of the ICMJE criteria by all participants. They can be considered independent of previous instruction or experience. Final approval and Critical revision should be actively taught as important authorship criteria to future scientists.

Representation of journals from five neighboring European countries in the Journal Citation Reports

This study explores the representation of scientific journals from Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro in the Thomson Scientific’s 2005 Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The number of journals covered by JCR was analyzed in relation to scientific productivity of selected countries and the size of their economies, and no apparent relationship between these factors was found. Our findings suggest that other factors, including the quality of individual journals, may influence how many journals a country will have in the JCR.

No health research without education for research--experience from an integrated course in undergraduate medical curriculum.

13 (Honey and Mumford Learning Styles and Myers–Briggs Type Indicator – MBTI). The reflector learning style was the most preferred and pragmatist, the least preferred learning style in both groups and the personality-type SFEJ was the commonest MBTI bestfit type amongst both groups. The poor performers were similar to the satisfactory performers in Learning Styles and Personality profiles (p4 0.05). Contrary to our hypothesis, the findings showed that learning style preference and personality profile were not related to clinical under-performance. There are limitations to our study with a single-point estimate of clinical performance in one centre. However, our study did not show any differences in Learning Style preferences and Personality profiles in poorly and satisfactorily performing medical students in an early clinical assessment. It might be that poorly performing clinical students are best identified using a composite measure of clinical performance, either cross-sectional or longitudinal, which would allow further investigation of the underlying causes and evidencebased targeted remediation.

Launch of online medical peace work course

292 www.thelancet.com Vol 372 July 26, 2008 IARC has radically transformed itself into an international cancer agency, staff ed with public-health specialists, having as its main objective the development of national cancer control programmes, particularly in developing countries, with research as a minor and occasional component. Each one of these options is in principle defensible, since they all respond to real needs. However, a choice must be made: because the biennial core budget of IARC is a relatively modest US

Press releases and email notices increase local and global visibility of a small medical journal

45 million, the three strategies are not, in my view, mutually compatible. If none of them is pursued in a concentrated, competitive fashion by fi rst class professionals, IARC risks becoming one of several international agencies characterised by low eff ectiveness. Given the momentous implica tions of the choice, it would be wise for the newly appointed IARC Director to subject the long-term mission and role of IARC to an in-depth review grounded on the advice of independent and outstanding personalities in cancer research and in inter national public health.

On the occasion of the centennial year of the two greatest Croatian soccer teams: brief review of the evidence base for team physicians

To increase its visibility among the general public and the international scientific community, the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ), a small journal from the so‐called scientific periphery, introduced a media strategy of sending press releases to journalists and email notices to the newsdesk of a high‐profile international scientific journal. Subsequent news coverage and the positive response of journalists show that press releases and targeted email notices increased international visibility of articles published in a small scientific journal, and improved communication with journalists as mediators of scientific information to the general public.

Mentoring in Academic Medicine: A Systematic Review

There is an expression that “soccer is the most important unimportant thing in the world.” Although everyone admits it is “only a game,” enormous importance is attached to it. Social significance of this sport is so great that it inevitably affects the health of people. In one of the most extreme examples, a disagreement at a soccer match sparked a war between two Central American countries, leaving thousands of people dead or displaced (1). But this notorious event is just the tip of the iceberg. Days when soccer games take place – usually Sundays – are associated with a rise in violence, while the soccer fever during great international contests, such as the World Cup or Euro Cup, results in an increased number of emergency calls to ambulance services (2). Fans intuitively know that loud and passionate cheering can influence refereeing decisions in favor of their team (3), but they are perhaps less aware that such behavior is associated with a significant increase in rates of acute cardiovascular events (4,5). Rhetoric of violence is obvious when fans metaphorically demand from players to “die on the soccer field,” but unfortunately, it is not unheard of that players die on the soccer field not only metaphorically but literally (6).