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field. As I mentioned earlier, not everyone is good at mentoring. My first clinical preceptor is a
nice person. He is one of the most experienced and skilled dosimetrists in the clinic. I ever felt
very lucky to have him as my preceptor. Honestly, I was even very impressed about his skills and
experience in dosimetry. He ever was my mentor, a good dosimetrist I want to be. Unfortunately,
he failed in mentoring. He was too busy to invest his time in mentoring me on a regular basis. I
was so hesitated to come to him with questions because more likely he would tell me he would
help me later or give him five minutes but later for him truly means a day or even longer time
and I had to keep reminding him. I even felt very guilty to bother him with questions. He always
said I was too early to learn his planning skills (mostly he does SBRT planning). Without having
the opportunities of hands-on practice and systemic mentoring from basic treatment planning
skills, I really had a hard time to understand and remember what he was showing me to create a
SBRT plan. I got so confused and frustrated. I was very diffident about communicating my
frustration and anxiousness on learning pace with my clinical coordinator and my formal
preceptor who is the supervisor of my clinical preceptor. In my beginning of my clinical study
and being the first student in the center, we both did not know how to prioritize the tasks to
achieve the clinical study goals. Obviously, this ineffective mentoring created tension between
the mentor and the mentee, and could not lead to completion, academic success, scholarly
productivity, and career achievement.1 Luckily, it was not too late to make the change and seek
more good mentors. My current mentor is another experienced dosimetrist. She taught me how to
create a plan with a certain technique by motivating my own understanding and thoughts of how
and why to do that way, and guided me to reach my clinical goals with constructive feedbacks.
My experience about ineffective mentoring demonstrates the importance of effective mentoring
to medical dosimetry students.
Nevertheless, mentorship is undervalued in Medical Dosimetry. The training process is
not conducted formally and evaluated periodically with standards. The experienced individuals
may not be a good mentor. The learning process is not only mentees responsibilities either. The
mentorship is a two-way relationship between mentors and mentees. The mentor can also be a
mentee of the other person. Mentoring is not only to dosimetry students, but also peers, patients,
or the family members, and vice versa. Mentoring is a process of learning and growing for both
mentors and mentees. The mentors are rewarded with a sense of satisfaction, skill improvement,
and career advancement while the mentees gain new knowledge, skills, and advices.
Appendix A
tell yourself that I need to handle this professionally, instead of kind of getting upset, not
handling constructively. You have to think of, OK, somebody is looking at me, and see how I
react to this. I want them to learn how to react to the situation. So I need to check myself to
make sure I handle it the way I should. Its hard, but good for mentoring. Nobody is going to be
perfect. It helps you to develop self-awareness.
Q7: What are your advices about how to find good mentors?
I think you have be open minded about it. Look for things from a lot of different people. When I
was a student, I remember I met so many different people through my rotations. Somebody you
naturally like. I like them how to do things, I want to be like that when I am done. You have to be
open minded to take look at from everybody you met, and develop your own styles of how you
goanna work and process.
Q8: what are your opinions on how to successfully transit to a mentor from mentee?
I think you have to keep in mind that you are always probably going to be both. I think that make
you better. I still have to learn how to learn, how to handle the situations, well train and mentor
the other people. So the kind of keeping that part in checking that you never know everything all
the time and how to do exactly every time. there are always some things more to kick in and
more to growth. Stay confident. Dont close the door of learning.
Q9: What would you do if you are told opposite things by your mentors?
Thats hard to go through. But you kind of have to like seek more and ask more questions, try to
understand why they gave you different answers, things provoke more, and figure out why. You
might have to kind of form your own opinion on the matter. Things like fact based, you might
have to say Ok, this is how this person handled, that is how this person does. You have to try to
be open minded to understand peoples different perspectives.
Q10: do you still actively seek out mentorship? Who are your current mentors?
Yes, I do. Because of the growth thing, its cool to make your career. You need to open it and
meet somebody. Taking a little bit something from them. I just joined the exam committee in
radiation therapy, and found its so interesting. Taking that experience and using as a mentorship
experience. Its kind of bring back to what I am doing in my daily life. Somebody like Fur
(another senior RT) is my mentor since when I was a student here. She is kind of the same
person. She always understands how to teach you, and how to understand her teaching methods.
There are always something you can learn from somebody who have been in this field for a long
time, and take stuff from students too. Some students come through, and you kind of think Oh, I
didnt know about that. Thanks for showing me about that. You have to be open to it, not like
Oh, you are new. You dont know how it is. You have to make sure you are open for learning
new things.
Appendix A
Medical Dosimetry Student: Joanne Li
Sometimes people are not open to be taught. They say they want to learn, but not really. You
gave them the information. They would think why do I need to know it? If people are resistant
to learn, it is a struggle. Even though they are in school and they need to learn. Even outside of
school in a professional environment, if people had their own ideas and are not open to develop
different ideas, that is a struggle. One of things with mentorship is not just give. I try to give my
perspectives, all perspectives, so people can understand the broader scoop why I do the way I do
it or someone may do things differently. That gives somebody the opportunity to make their own
idea to address the situation.
Q6: What are your advices about how to find good mentors?
Finding a good mentor is difficult. You have to find someone who is willing to be a good mentor.
I think people who are open to answer your questions, not just one-word answer, and who are
willing to describe more to you. I think the part of finding a good mentor is being a good mentee
to show your interests of learning. Not everybody could be a good mentor. I have to think about
myself how I found a good mentor. I think a lot of is being open about what people have to say.
You will see a transformation of people. There was someone who used to working here, who
other people always had hard time to work with this person. But I asked questions and had the
interests to be a good mentee to soften him, he became a good mentor for me with everyone else
had difficulty with him.
Q7: what are your opinions on how to successfully transit to a mentor from mentee?
I think this ties in with knowledge of the materials whatever you are going to teach this person. I
think they need to slide gap in there what you got the experience. You learn the advantages and
disadvantages. You learn from your mistake. It is so important to learn from your mistakes. I
think you need that time where you have to be responsible for yourself, make decisions, see the
outcomes with that decision, and gain that personal experience. That is what I said earlier being a
good mentor you have to have the solid foundation of what you metor, and you only get that
through personal experience.
Q8: What would you do if you are told opposite things by your mentors?
That happened all the time. You do what that person wants you to do at the time. *laughs* I see
its been a good thing because you will then get experience of doing different things in different
ways. So you can learn what is the best for you and how you will approach the problems. That
helps you understand why you are doing and what you are doing. Eventually you will form your
own style.
Q9: do you still actively seek out mentorship? Who are your current mentors?
Absolutely. We are always learning. We never stop learning. There is always somebody who has
different perspectives you can learn from and knows more than you do. I dont know everything.
Everybody could be my mentor. Everybody has different experience and perspectives; Ive
always learned from other people. You pick up a piece of information here and there, and you
work into your own philosophies and how you do things.