Sponsorship in academic medicine in Switzerland: Push and pull

Introduction: Mentorship provides general career guidance in academic medicine. Sponsorship advocates for a sponsee by endorsing this person for a position or role. Sponsorship is less common and originates from the corporate world. The objective was to evaluate current mentorship and sponsorship practices in academic medicine in the German-speaking regions of Switzerland. The aim was to assess to which degree sponsorship is implemented in academic medicine in Switzerland.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey of current and alumni participants of career development programs at two Medical Faculties of Swiss universities. Both programs build on institutionalized mentoring. The anonymous electronic survey was based on a literature review with non-validated questions about mentorship and sponsorship.

Results: The overall survey response rate was 37.6% (38/101). The majority of respondents was female (31/38; 81.6%) and between 30 and 40 years of age (22/38; 57.9%). Almost all participants had at least one mentor (37/38; 97.4%), and mentoring addressed all or most (21/38; 55.3%) of the relevant topics regarding academic career development. More than one third of the respondents (13/38; 34.2%) did not have a sponsor, 4/38 (10.5%) were unsure whether they had a sponsor, and 5/38 (13.2%) had not yet heard about sponsorship.

Discussion: In Switzerland, mentorship is well-established in academic medicine while awareness for the benefits of sponsorship needs to be fostered in order to further advance academic careers in medicine.

Conclusion: Mentoring and sponsoring may be considered key instruments for empowerment of junior faculty/physician scientists to become leaders in the field of academic medicine.