Background and Objectives: Coaching, mentoring, and sponsoring are tools academic leaders can utilize to develop junior faculty. Each tool has a unique goal, time frame and method. It has been suggested that sponsoring may be a particularly useful tool for furthering the careers of women in medicine. Our primary aim was to understand to what extent one group of academic leaders—family medicine department chairs—have benefited from each tool in their own career development and how often they use each to develop others. A secondary aim was to compare women’s experiences with sponsorship to their male colleagues. Methods: We surveyed all US family medicine department chairs electronically about their experiences with coaching, mentoring, and sponsoring. We collected data from August 2019 to October 2019. Results: One hundred five of 193 family medicine department chairs responded to our survey (54.4% response rate). Most indicated that mentoring played a significant role in their career development, with fewer reporting coaching and sponsorship played significant roles. More reported frequent use of mentoring to develop faculty compared to coaching or sponsoring. Training in mentoring and sponsoring was associated with increased use, but coaching was not. No gender difference was found in this study population. Conclusions: Chairs have less experience with coaching and sponsoring than mentoring. Personal experience being coached, mentored, or sponsored was associated with increased use of these tools. Formal training may increase use of mentoring and sponsoring. Contrary to our hypothesis, female chairs’ experience with sponsoring was similar to their male peers.

Background and Objectives: The goal of this study was to explore how to use sponsoring, coaching, and mentoring (SCM) for faculty development by clarifying the functions embedded in SCM. The study aims to ensure that department chairs can be intentional in providing those functions and/or playing those roles for the benefit of all their faculty. Methods: We used qualitative, semistructured interviews in this study. We followed a purposeful sampling strategy to recruit a diverse sample of family medicine department chairs across the United States. Participants were asked about their experiences receiving and providing sponsoring, coaching, and mentoring. We iteratively coded audio recorded and transcribed interviews for content and themes. Results: We interviewed 20 participants between December 2020 and May 2021 to identify actions associated with sponsoring, coaching, and mentoring. Participants identified six main actions sponsors perform. These actions are identifying opportunities, recognizing an individual’s strengths, encouraging opportunity-seeking, offering tangible support, optimizing candidacy, nominating as a candidate, and promising support. In contrast, they identified seven main actions a coach performs. These are clarifying, advising, giving resources, performing critical appraisals, giving feedback, reflecting, and scaffolding (ie, providing support while learning). Finally, participants identified six main actions the mentors perform. The list includes checking in, listening, sharing wisdom, directing, supporting, and collaborating. Conclusions: We present SCM as an identifiable series of actions that need to be thought of and performed intentionally. Our clarification will help leaders purposefully select their actions and allows opportunity for evaluating their effectiveness. Future research will explore developing and evaluating programs that support learning how to provide SCM in order to enhance the process of faculty development and provide it equitably.

Background Remission of diabetes can be rewarding for patients and physicians, but there is limited study of how patients perceive the timeline of a disease along the continuum of glycaemic control. Objective To explore how patients perceive the timeline of diabetes along the continuum of glycaemic control and their goals of care and to identify whether family physicians communicate the principles of regression and remission of diabetes. Design Mixed methods approach of qualitative semi‐structured interviews with purposive sampling followed by cross‐sectional survey of physicians. Participants Thirty‐three patients living with prediabetes (preDM) or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) at medical centres in Georgia and Nevada; and 387 family physicians providing primary care within the same health system. Results Patients described two timelines of diabetes: as a lifelong condition or as a condition that can be cured. Patients who perceived a lifelong condition described five treatment goals: reducing glucose‐related laboratory values, losing weight, reducing medication, preventing treatment intensification and avoiding complications. For patients who perceived diabetes as a disease with an end, the goal of care was to achieve normoglycaemia. In response to patient vignettes that described potential cases of remission and regression, 38.2% of physician respondents would still communicate that a patient has preDM and 94.6% would tell the patient that he still had diabetes. Conclusions Most physicians here exhibited reluctance to communicate remission or regression in patient care. Yet, patients describe two different potential timelines, including a subset who expect their diabetes can be ‘cured’. Physicians should incorporate shared decision making to create a shared mental model of diabetes and its potential outcomes with patients. Patient or Public Contribution In this mixed methods study, as patients participated in the qualitative phase of this study, we asked patients to tell us what additional questions we should ask in subsequent interviews. Data from this qualitative phase informed the design and interpretation of the quantitative phase with physician participants.

Postaxial type B polydactyly is the presence of a supernumerary digit attached by soft tissue in a pedunculated fashion to the fifth digit. In the present case, a newborn with bilateral postaxial type B polydactyly underwent suture ligation to remove the supernumerary digit, but multiple ligation attempts were required. Ultimately, residual tissue remained bilaterally, but it did not seem to be painful. A comprehensive review of the literature revealed no clear recommendation on treatment options for patients with postaxial polydactyly. Although suture ligation has been common practice, surgical excision is an acceptable option that can be performed in the neonatal unit and may result in fewer complications than suture ligation.