Personal perspectives on mentoring.

Mentoring has been an essential component of my training and my career in gastroenterology. I have enjoyed a wonderful experience in gastroenterology and, as a woman, have a somewhat different perspective on the role of mentorship in medicine and gastroenterology. However, complex professional and personal situations are not unique to women and the general principles of mentorship are broadly applicable to career development for men or women. At every stage of my career, I have received useful suggestions that have shaped my decisions, identified a niche that suits me, developed my skills, and provided guidance and feedback on how “the plan” was working. These colleagues and mentors led me to choose medicine and gastroenterology and helped to develop my career in academics. Having the benefit of being associated with GI programs at 4 different institutions, I believe that the most important aspects of mentorship are based on the personality of the professional environment and the ability to find a good “match” from the pool of mentors every program has at its disposal. I was fortunate to train at McMaster University, which, as I appreciate more now, provided a rich experience in an innovating and inspiring environment that focused on the positive and moved past the impossible. This is an institution that gave the medical profession evidencebased medicine (deemed as one of the top 15 medical developments by the British Medical Journal1) and problem-based learning—2 innovative strategies that were the pillars of the Faculty of Health Sciences when it was founded in 1974. Their research groups were organized by multidisciplinary themes, uncluttered by departmental boundaries, which was a model that provided opportunities for a focused research development but in a broader, very informative, and educational context. While I was at McMaster, the GI research program received a major boost with the creation of their Intesti-