John H. Flint, MD

WHPF Projects: Mentoring and Resident Advocacy

I served as a WHPF from 2007-2008. As a WHPF I have worked on two main projects. First, ever since starting residency I was interested in the idea and value of mentors and mentorship. Second, I helped to create this website to expose residents to the Academy and politics.

I am studied the prevalence and value of mentors for orthopaedic residents in training, how they affected them in their training, and whether residents felt that mentors were a critical part to their training. Multiple articles have been written in the literature regarding the loss of orthopaedic mentors due to the stresses of current orthopaedic practice, but the question had not been studied from a resident perspective. I created a survey to discover the prevalence and opinion of residents on mentors. The results of the study were published in 2009 in JBJS (2009;91:1017-1022.

I would like to carry the project further for a second phase and study the longer term affects of mentoring and how it influences the post residency choices of orthopaedic surgeons. The question I would like to answer is if good mentors during residency produce more academically minded orthopaedic surgeons that pursue non-remunerated activities such as research, advocacy, involvement in state societies or national organizations, or public education events.

The second project I worked on was the WHPF website. I designed the website to allow residents interested in the Academy and the political landscape to have a road map to help them understand how the academy works, what it does for them, and how to get involved.

Since completing the Washington Health Policy Fellowship I have stayed involved in advocacy and the political process by attending the Research Capitol Hill Days and National Orthopaedic Leadership Conference during which I have lobbied for musculoskeletal patient issues on Capitol Hill. I am also active in the Arizona Orthopaedic Society. Furthermore, I have continued to write articles for the AAOS Now publication with my WHPF colleagues.

Recent Related Publications:

• IPOD, IPAD . . . IPAB?- AAOS Now, July 2010

• Health insurance: Is there a better way to cover Americans?-- AAOS Now, November 2009

• The Value of Mentorship in Orthopaedic Surgery Resident Education: The Residents' Perspective--The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American). 2009;91:1017-1022

• John McCain: The Straight-Talking Healthcare Express
AAOS Now, October 2008

• From Pong To Caos--Short History of Computers in Orthopaedics
AAOS Now, December 2007