Online Mastermind Groups: A Non-hierarchical Mentorship Model for Professional Development

Mentorship is an important driver of professional development and scholarship in academic medicine. Several mentorship models have been described in the medical education literature, with the majority featuring a hierarchical relationship between senior and junior members of an institution. ‘Mastermind Groups’, popularized in the business world, offer an alternative model of group mentorship that benefits from the combined intelligence and accumulated experience of the participants involved. We describe an online application of the Mastermind model, used as an opportunity for faculty development by a globally distributed team of health professions educators. The majority of our participants rated their experiences over two online Mastermind group mentoring sessions as ‘very valuable’, resulting in recommendations of specific developmental resources, professional referrals, and identifiable immediate ‘next steps’ for their careers. Our experience suggests that online Mastermind groups are an effective, feasible, zero-cost model for group mentorship and professional development in medicine.