Maybe this letter is more a letter to myself, a reminder … that mentorship is the key to training good, competent, humane surgeons. That this extra effort is what will create change, sustainability, and at the end of the pathway, is what will be remembered. That this is the type of person and surgeon I want to be.

Adam Goldstein, director of the Trauma Surgery Unit at The Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, writes a letter to Dr. William Schwab thanking him for his outstanding example of mentorship.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the November 2022 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.