Abstract
Background:
Mentoring is crucial to the growth and development of mentors, mentees, and host organisations. Yet, the process of mentoring in surgery is poorly understood and increasingly mired in ethical concerns that compromise the quality of mentorship and prevent mentors, mentees, and host organisations from maximising its full potential. A systematic scoping review was undertaken to map the ethical issues in surgical mentoring to enhance understanding, assessment, and guidance on ethical conduct.
Methods:
Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework was used to guide a systematic scoping review involving articles published between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2018 in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, ERIC, ScienceDirect, Mednar, and OpenGrey databases. Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis approach was adopted to compare ethical issues in surgical mentoring across different settings, mentee and mentor populations, and host organisations.
Results:
A total of 3849 abstracts were identified, 464 full-text articles were retrieved, and 50 articles were included. The 3 themes concerned ethical lapses at the levels of mentor or mentee, mentoring relationships, and host organisation.
Conclusions:
Mentoring abuse in surgery involves lapses in conduct, understanding of roles and responsibilities, poor alignment of expectations, and a lack of clear standards of practice. It is only with better structuring of mentoring processes and effective support of host organisation tasked with providing timely, longitudinal, and holistic assessment and oversight will surgical mentoring overcome prevailing ethical concerns surrounding it.
Introduction
Mentoring in surgery enhances the job satisfaction of mentees and mentors,1,2 boosts mentees’ personal and professional growth,2-11 and advances the reputation of the host organisation through improved research productivity 1 and faculty retention. 10 Described as ‘an activity in which a more senior or experienced person who has earned respect and power within his or her field takes a more junior or less experienced person (known as a mentee or protégé) under his or her wing to teach, encourage and ensure the protégé’s success’, 11 mentoring’s success pivots on the formation of enduring and personalised mentoring relationships between mentors and mentees.12-15 However, nurturing mentoring relationships between senior clinicians and junior doctors and/or medical students renders mentees heavily reliant on the mentoring relationship for their success.10,16-24 These concerns are multiplied when surgical mentoring occurs within a hierarchical work environment that propagates power differentials.10,16-24 Concerns are further raised given suggestions that surgical mentoring has done little to address growing concerns about potential abuse of mentoring relationships, the misappropriation of mentee’s work,10,16-24 and its poor record on whistleblowing.16,25,26
Concerns over professional and ethical lapses in mentoring practice are also compounded by data suggesting that mentors and mentees are poorly equipped to meet their mentoring roles27-29 and host organisations are not well equipped to assess mentoring relationships1-11,16,18-21,30-47 or programmes in surgery.12-16,48-67 Policing compliance of mentoring processes are also limited by the presence of varied mentoring practices fed in part by diverse understanding of mentoring processes due to conflation of distinct mentoring approaches14,15,54-68 and due to mistaken intermixing of mentoring approaches with supervision, role modelling, coaching, advising, networking, and/or sponsorship.69,70 Limiting the efficacy of prevailing mentoring assessment tools 71 has been their failure to account for different curricula, mentee and mentor populations, and health care and education systems13-15,49,52,71,72 as well as mentoring’s evolving, adaptive, goal-specific, context-sensitive, and mentee-, mentor-, relationship-, and host-organisation-dependent nature (mentoring’s nature). 73
The need for this review
At the heart of these limitations has been a lack of an effective understanding of prevailing ethical concerns in surgical mentoring. Although redesigning assessment tools lies outside the remit of this article, a good start to overcoming these obstacles is better understanding the nature of ethical issues impacting surgical mentoring.16,19-21,74
Methodology
Given mentoring’s nature which limits scrutiny of mentoring practice to studies of mentoring programmes in similar health care, educational, and clinical settings and congruous mentor and mentee populations, this study focuses its interests on articles focused on ethical issues in surgical mentoring.12,14,15,49,52,72 A systematic scoping review of ethical issues in mentoring in surgery is adopted to explore the scope and depth12,14,15,49,52,72 of limited existing data on mentoring malpractice in surgery.16,19-21,28,75-84 Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s 79 and Levac et al’s 78 methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews,77,80,81 the flexible nature75-77 of systematic scoping review 76 allows a summary of current data on ethical issues in mentoring across multiple contexts and population backgrounds in peer-reviewed and grey literature28,79,82,83,85 in novice mentoring in surgery.28,78,79,81-83 Defined as ‘dynamic, context dependent, goal sensitive, mutually beneficial relationship between an experienced clinician and junior clinicians and/or undergraduates that is focused upon advancing the development of the mentee’, novice mentoring is the dominant form of mentoring medical education.52,53 Attention on novice mentoring in surgery is also apt given that it is especially susceptible to power differentials in mentoring relationships.52,53
Similarities between novice mentoring practices in undergraduate and postgraduate surgery programmes allow them to be analysed together.14,15,49,52,72
Stage 1: Identifying the Research Question
With the objectives of this review established under the guidance of librarians at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) medical library and the National Cancer Centre Singapore’s (NCCS) medical library and 5 local educational experts and clinicians, the 6 members of the research team determined and developed the primary research question to be ‘What are the ethical issues and professional lapses affecting mentoring in surgery?’. The secondary questions included ‘What factors precipitate concerns about abuse of mentoring?’ and ‘What solutions have been offered to mitigate them?’. This research question was established with the use of the PICO framework as illustrated in Table 1.
PICO, inclusion criteria, and exclusion criteria applied to literature search.
Stage 2: Identifying Relevant Studies
With guidance from librarians at the NUS’s medical library and the NCCS’s medical library and 5 local educational experts and clinicians, the 6 members of the research team finalised the inclusion and exclusion criteria of this review.
The research team worked in pairs and examined all the abstracts retrieved from a MEDLINE search while applying the abstract screening tool, using variations of the word ‘mentor’ AND ‘ethics’ OR ‘morals’ OR professionalism OR barriers OR negative attitudes OR ‘concerns’ that appeared in the title or abstract of surgical papers. Applying the abstract screening tool that the research team designed, the 3 reviewers (F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., C.W.S.C.) guided by the 2 senior reviewers (L.K.R.K. and S.M.) and the near-peer mentor (AT) independently screened the titles and abstracts identified in the PubMed search and compared the first 50 identified abstracts. F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., and C.W.S.C. received individual feedback on their findings and then proceeded to employ the abstract screening to the rest of the search results from PubMed.
On completing their review of PubMed articles, the 5 members of the review team compared their individual findings at online meetings and met to discuss discrepancies in their findings with the senior researcher (L.K.R.K.) and the near-peer mentor (AT). F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., and C.W.S.C. participated in group feedback sessions on the findings and were provided a chance to discuss their concerns and queries. Reviewing the results, the 6 reviewers employed Sambunjak et al’s 27 ‘negotiated consensual validation’ approach to achieve consensus on the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the search, the search teams, and the abstract screening tool. Five members of the research team (F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., C.W.S.C., AT, L.K.R.K.) reviewed the search results and agreed on the inclusion/exclusion criteria which formed the basis of the abstract screening tool used in this study. All study designs (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches) were included in this review. Articles that did not focus on ethical issues and professional lapses within mentoring in surgery were excluded.
The finalised search strategy included the following keywords: (medicine OR medical OR clinical) AND (mentor* OR mentee*) AND (ethics OR morals OR professionalism OR barriers OR negative attitudes). Following the standardisation and training process, the 5 reviewers performed searches of the other databases, then screened the list of full text independently, created their individual lists of articles to be included, and shared them online with all the reviewers. The same keywords were used for all the databases.
Centring around mentoring in surgery, 5 databases, namely, PubMed, Embase, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Scopus, were searched between April 18 and October 24, 2018. After the pilot search, the search strategy was further evaluated and refined after consultations with the librarians. The same search strategy was replicated on OpenGrey and Mednar databases between September 12 and September 20, 2018. An identical search strategy was again performed on March 10, 2019 for all 7 databases to retrieve all relevant 2018 articles. Articles published in English or with English translations describing ethics in mentoring, challenges, barriers, and unprofessional practices from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2018 were analysed.
Articles published before year 2000 were excluded as they often failed to delineate the specific mentoring approach being studied and were prone to conflating novice mentoring with distinct forms of mentoring such as group, mosaic, mixed, patient, family, youth, leadership, near peer, and e-mentoring as well as role modelling, coaching, supervision, networking, advising, and/or sponsorship.14,15,49,52,72 All allied health specialities (eg, dietetics, nursing, psychology, chiropractic, midwifery, social work), non-medical professions (eg, science, veterinary, dentistry), and other non-surgery medical specialities were excluded.
Stage 3: Selecting Studies to Be Included in the Review
To provide a wide perspective of ethical issues in surgical mentoring, the features and nature of ethical issues facing novice mentoring programmes across various educational, clinical, health care, health care financing, and cultural settings in surgery were examined. To circumvent limitations arising from mentoring’s nature, Braun and Clarke’s 86 approach to thematic analysis was used to determine the consistent characteristics of a surgical mentoring approach across different contexts, objectives, and mentee and mentor profiles within novice mentoring programmes.27,86,87 Braun and Clarke’s 86 approach to thematic analysis was also employed given the absence of an a priori framework of mentoring27,86,87 and as it circumvents the vast array of research methodologies used by the included articles, which prevent the adoption of statistical pooling and analysis.
Analysis of the Transcripts
The senior mentor (L.K.R.K.) and the near-peer mentor (AT) who are well versed with Braun and Clarke’s 86 approach to thematic analysis guided the 3 junior members of the research team (F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., C.W.S.C.) as they performed independent searches of the 7 databases. The abstract screening tool was applied to extract potential articles before importing to EndNote, where removal of duplicates, organisation of references, and compilation of a list of individual abstracts to be analysed were done. Each list was shared among members of the review team. Disputes were settled during online or face-to-face review meetings. Sambunjak et al’s 27 approach of ‘negotiated consensual validation’ was applied to achieve consensus on the finalised abstracts to be reviewed.
Each reviewer independently analysed the final list of abstracts and compiled a list of full-text articles to be reviewed. The lists were compared and discrepancies resolved at online or face-to-face review meetings. ‘Negotiated consensual validation’ was used to achieve consensus on the finalised full-text articles to be reviewed. 27
All full-text articles to be reviewed were added to a shared Google folder and independently reviewed by the research team who developed individual lists of articles to be included in the study. These lists were compared and discussed online and ‘negotiated consensual validation’ 27 was used to achieve consensus on the final list of articles to be included (Figure 1).

PRISMA flowchart.
The data charting form used by Tan et al 14 that characterised all publications by author, year of publication, objective of the study, practice setting, methodology, population profile, and outcome evaluation was adopted. The data charting form was trialled on the first 10 articles and evaluated by the 5 members of the review team (F.Q.H.L., W.J.C., C.W.S.C., AT, L.K.R.K.) to ensure comprehensibility. The research team independently coded all the included articles and shared their findings online.
Stage 4: Data Characterisation and Analysis
Of the 50 included articles, 43 discussed mentoring practice and relationships, and 7 scrutinised mentoring obstacles and how to mitigate problems in surgical mentoring.
In total, 24 articles employed quantitative methods,1,3,4,7,10,34,36,37,39,40,42,88-100 3 were qualitative,101-103 5 used mixed methods,9,38,45,104,105 8 were literature reviews,2,8,11,18,31,35,106,107 5 were perspective papers,6,30,32,33,43 3 were descriptive in nature,41,44,108 and 2 were systematic reviews.5,109 Nineteen studies in-volved mentees only,3,4,32,36,40,42,45,88,90,92,94-96,98,99,101,102,104,108 4 studies involved mentors only,1,33,100,103 25 articles involved both mentees and mentors,2,5-9,11,18,30,31,34,35,37,38,41,43,44,89,91,93,97,105-107,109 1 included the views of mentees and programme directors, 39 and 1 involved chairs of departments of surgery. 10
The review team independently ‘coded’ the ‘surface’ meaning of the same 10 included articles. Thematic saturation was achieved after 8 papers. The coding process comprised line-by-line coding and subsequently focused coding ‘evolving to produce categories that responded to these codes’. 110 The independent analyses and ‘negotiated consensual validation’ 27 were used to delineate a common coding framework and code book. The ‘detail-rich’ codes were grouped together to determine semantic themes.14,15,86,111 The data, themes, coding framework, and code book were regularly reviewed86,112 and ‘negotiated consensual validation’ 27 was used to decide on the finalised themes.
Stage 5: Collating, Summarising, and Reporting the Results
The 3 themes identified were the ethical issues at the mentor or mentee level, relational level, and the host organisation level. Given that most of these concerns have not been discussed in detail in prevailing publications and to enhance use of the data, the findings will be presented in tables.
Results
Ethical issues at the individual mentor or mentee level
Ethical issues at the individual mentor or mentee level are presented in Table 2.
Ethical issues at the individual mentor or mentee level.
Possible solutions
Training programmes and routine evaluation of the mentoring relationship run by the host organisation were the most common proposals to address ethical issues at the mentor or mentee level. The proposed solutions are summarised in Table 3.
Proposed solutions to ethical issues at mentor or mentee level.
Ethical issues at the level of the mentoring relationship
Ethical issues at the level of the mentoring relationship are presented in Table 4.
Ethical issues at the level of mentoring relationship.
Possible solutions
The proposed solutions explore methods to address the lack of time of both mentors and mentees, and reconcile the inherent differences between both parties. The proposed solutions are summarised in Table 5.
Proposed solutions to ethical issues at the level of mentoring relationship.
Ethical issues at the level of the host organisation
Ethical issues at the level of the host organisation are presented in Table 6.
Ethical issues at the level of host organisation.
Possible solutions
The role of the host organisation is key to addressing ethical issues affecting mentoring relationships. The proposed solutions are summarised in Table 7.
Proposed solutions to ethical issues at the level of host organisation.
Stage 6: Undertaking Consultations With Key Stakeholders
Stakeholders were consulted on the findings of this scoping review to gather their opinions regarding the findings, the cost effectiveness and feasibility of actualising changes, and what they thought were other ethical concerns not discussed in this study. These findings together with limited studies on the downsides of mentoring124-126 and a lack127-129 of quality126,130-135 and comprehensive124,136-142 evaluations of mentoring processes, relations, and programmes also helped focus future studies.
Discussion
This systematic scoping review succeeds in highlighting and defining the concept of mentoring abuse in surgery that must consider the nature and conduct within mentoring relationships, the roles and responsibilities of the host organisation, the specific clinical setting, and the mentoring environment. This wider concept of lapses in ethical practice is referred to as ‘mentoring malpractice’. Mentoring malpractice underlines the need for a holistic, multisource, and longitudinal view of ethical practice in mentoring that should alert programme designers and administrators to lapses in practice.
There are a number of aspects to mentoring malpractice. The first 3 pertain to the matching process, evaluations of mentoring relationships, and oversight and structuring of the mentoring process. All 3 practices emphasise the central role of mentoring relationships at the heart of mentoring and the role of matching and structuring the mentoring process to nurture effective mentoring relationships. These considerations draw attention to the role of the host organisation, which is tasked with supporting and evaluating the matching, assessment, policing, and structuring of recruitment, matching, appraisal, and support systems within the mentoring process. To begin, despite its central role in overseeing mentoring practice, the constituents, structure, roles, and responsibilities of the host organisation remain poorly described. This gap impacts the ability of the host organisation to consistently assess and oversee mentoring processes.
It is also apparent that failure to consider contextual factors and their influence on the mentoring process, approach, and programme12-15 and the impact of mentoring’s goal-sensitive, context-specific, mentee-, mentor-, host-organisation-, mentoring-approach-, mentoring-relationship-dependent nature12-15,48,49,51-53,72,143-147 underline the limitations of prevailing tools. Inconsistencies in the mentoring approach make it difficult to assess the selection, matching, and training and mentoring processes. These variabilities compromise alignment of expectations that then endanger mentoring relationships and hinder effective policing of expectations, roles, and responsibilities and compromise mentoring standards. These considerations impair the ability of the host organisation to evaluate and support programmes.
Limitations to mentoring tools also arise due to failure to account for the culture of the programme that stem from the manner that breaches in mentoring practice are perceived.47,148 Larkin’s 149 characterisation of unacceptable behaviour which includes discrimination of patients and colleagues based on race, sex, or creed, performing procedures without consent and/or appropriate indications, and breaking patient confidentiality would in the present climate be viewed as egregious lapses warranting censure.47,148 Similarly, many practices deemed egregious by Larkin 149 would in the present day be worthy of dismissal.47,148 Such shifts in conceptions reflect changes in thinking and underline the influence of regnant social, professional, and academic norms, values, and beliefs which warrant further evaluation.47,148 This indicates the need for context-dependent, culturally appropriate understanding of mentoring and professional standards and culture given changes in guidelines, codes of conduct, and standards of practice.
Another aspect of mentoring malpractice regards distributive justice or ‘giving to each that which is his due’.150,151 In the surgical mentoring context, it may be more apt to refer to ‘“her” due’ when it is women who often have little access to the benefits of mentoring. Although there are programmes focused on increasing access for women and learners from ethnic minorities through specific stipulations in the matching processes, how access to the limited resources within mentoring programmes is addressed remains unclear. Fair access to mentoring programmes may also be limited by the overall goals such as those that prioritise publications and successful grants. Such goals may place greater weight on the recruitment, selection, and matching of mentees with proven research and academic track records rather than prioritising equal access based on needs or on development of talent. Rationing of mentoring resources is also inevitable in the face of funding restrictions raising questions about how transparent recruitment decisions are. 152 This ought not to be tied to waste management which similarly imposes stricter matching processes to minimise the potential for failed relationships. 152 The notion that mentees and mentors can have a ‘trial period’ to work together before confirming a match may be a luxury many programmes cannot afford making poor support of matching, assessment, and oversight an ethical concern. 153
No discussion of mentoring malpractice would be complete without due considerations of mentoring dynamics or interactions between mentee, mentor, and the host organisation within their particular mentoring relationship. Mentoring quality builds on effective mentoring dynamics154-171 and on interactions facilitated by appropriate and personalised execution of mentoring responsibilities, effective responses on the part of the mentee, and the ability of host organisations to create and support mentoring environments and relationships. However, little is known about how these facets blend with one another, how the quality of mentoring relationships may be improved, and their impact on mentoring malpractice.
Limitations
Attenuating fears of ethical lapses in mentoring in surgery will also benefit from establishment and consistent policing of a code of conduct and standards of practice and clear delineation of the roles and responsibilities of mentors and mentees. The role of e-mentoring and other technology-based supplements to the mentoring process should also be a focus for further study.
It is apparent that there are substantial gaps in the primary data. First, most of the included articles focus on specific aspects of mentoring and confine their attention to specific ethical concerns rather than take a holistic perspective of ethical and professional concerns. This hampers the understanding of ethical issues in the mentoring process. Second, prevailing accounts of the mentoring process are rarely comprehensive and not longitudinal and accentuate insufficient insight into mentoring led in part by a lack of effective and validated assessment tools. A deeper understanding of the mentoring process will facilitate redesigning of mentorship tools to cater to the entangled nature of mentoring. Third, many solutions proposed are rudimentary and need to be contextualised and re-evaluated given the diversity of mentee, mentor, and host organisation populations, mentoring objectives, relationships and nature, and the respective educational and health care scenes. It is also crucial to recognise the principal goals, support, and inclination of the institution.
Conclusions
Although this systematic scoping review’s sketch of the ethical issues facing mentoring in surgery which will be of value to programme administrators, organisers, mentees, and mentors alike, there remain significant gaps. Absent are effective understanding of mentoring dynamics, the quality and nature of mentoring relationships, holistic mentoring environment and culture, and the predisposing factors behind mentoring malpractice. Missing too are longitudinal and consistent assessments of ethical issues in surgical mentoring.
It is only with better understanding of mentoring malpractice in surgery can effective assessment be designed to catch issues at an early stage. Drawing from lessons learnt from the closely related topic of assessments of professionalism,172-176 mentoring malpractice must first be seen as a multidimensional construct that demands assessments of mentoring malpractice be longitudinal, multisource, multidimensional, and at an individual, interpersonal, and societal or institutional level.172-176 Assessments also ought to consider the attributes and behaviours of positive ethical behaviours and include feedback from and to all parties.171-175 It is only thus can mentoring in surgery be advanced and surgical training be better supported and evaluated.
Supplemental Material
Appendix_1a_xyz26591340a7d58 – Supplemental material for A Systematic Scoping Review of Ethical Issues in Mentoring in Surgery
Supplemental material, Appendix_1a_xyz26591340a7d58 for A Systematic Scoping Review of Ethical Issues in Mentoring in Surgery by Fion Qian Hui Lee, Wen Jie Chua, Clarissa Wei Shuen Cheong, Kuang Teck Tay, Eugene Koh Yong Hian, Annelissa Mien Chew Chin, Ying Pin Toh, Stephen Mason and Lalit Kumar Radha Krishna in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development
Supplemental Material
Appendix_1b_xyz26591071fc880_1 – Supplemental material for A Systematic Scoping Review of Ethical Issues in Mentoring in Surgery
Supplemental material, Appendix_1b_xyz26591071fc880_1 for A Systematic Scoping Review of Ethical Issues in Mentoring in Surgery by Fion Qian Hui Lee, Wen Jie Chua, Clarissa Wei Shuen Cheong, Kuang Teck Tay, Eugene Koh Yong Hian, Annelissa Mien Chew Chin, Ying Pin Toh, Stephen Mason and Lalit Kumar Radha Krishna in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to dedicate this paper to the late Dr S Radha Krishna whose advice and ideas were integral to the success of this study. The authors would like to thank all anonymous reviewers whose advice and feedback greatly improved this manuscript. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article. This work was carried out as part of the Palliative Medicine Initiative run by the Division of Supportive and Palliative Care at the National Cancer Centre Singapore.
Funding:
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests:
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Contributions
FQHL, WJC, CWSC, YPT, SM, and LKRK conceptualised the study. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, EKYH, AMCC, YPT, SM, and LKRK proposed the methodology. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, YPT, SM, and LKRK performed the formal analysis. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, KTT, YPT, SM, and LKRK performed the investigation. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, YPT, SM, and LKRK curated the data. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, YPT, SM, and LKRK prepared the original draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed the paper. FQHL, WJC, CWSC, KTT, EKYH, YPT, SM, and LKRK edited the paper.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
