• Tyson A Fricke, Lee Melissa G Y MGY Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Murdoch Chil, Johann Brink, Yves d'Udekem, Christian P Brizard, and Igor E Konstantinov.
• Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
• Ann. Thorac. Surg. 2018 Jan 1; 105 (1): 317-320.

BackgroundIn 2005 the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Royal Children's Hospital started an early academic mentoring program for medical students and junior doctors with the aim of fostering an interest in academic surgery.MethodsBetween 2005 and 2015, 37 medical students and junior doctors participated in research in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Royal Children's Hospital. Each was given an initial project on which to obtain ethics approval, perform a literature review, data collection, statistical analysis, and prepare a manuscript for publication. A search of the names of these former students and doctors was conducted on PubMed to identify publications.ResultsA total of 113 journal articles were published in peer-reviewed journals with an average impact factor of 4.1 (range, 1.1 to 19.9). Thirty (30 of 37, 81%) published at least one article. A mean of 4.3 journal articles was published per student or junior doctor (range, 0 to 29). Eleven (11 of 37, 30%) received scholarships for their research. Nine (9 of 37, 24%) have completed or are enrolled in higher research degrees with a cardiothoracic surgery focus. Of these 9, 2 have completed doctoral degrees while in cardiothoracic surgery training. Five will complete their cardiothoracic surgery training with a doctoral degree and the other 2 are pursuing training in cardiology.ConclusionsA successful early academic mentoring program in a busy cardiothoracic surgery unit is feasible. Mentoring of motivated individuals in academic surgery benefits not only their medical career, but also helps maintain high academic output of the unit.Copyright © 2018 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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