Mentoring in biostatistics: some suggestions for reform

Abstract

Mentoring is routinely used as a tool to facilitate acquisition of skills by new professionals in fields like medicine, nursing, surgery, and business. While mentoring has been proposed as an effective strategy for knowledge and skills transfer in biostatistics and related fields, there is still much to be done to facilitate adoption by stakeholders, including academia and employers of biostatisticians. This is especially troubling given that biostatisticians play a key role in the success or otherwise of clinical research conducted for evidence-based decisions. In this paper, we offer suggestions on how mentoring can be applied in practice to advance the statistical training of future biostatisticians. In particular, we propose steps that academic statistics departments, professional statistical societies, and statistics organizations can take to advance the mentoring of young biostatisticians. Our suggestions also cover what mentors and mentees can do to facilitate a successful mentoring relationship.

Keywords:

• mentoring
• biostatistics
• career development

Acknowledgments

We thank the reviewers of the original version of the manuscript for helpful and insightful comments leading to improvement in the structure and content of the revised version. Lehana Thabane is a clinical trials mentor for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Adefowope Odueyungbo is a former student and mentee of Lehana Thabane. The study was funded in part by the CANNeC-TIN progam.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.