FROM the August 2007 STFM Newsletter A FUTURE FAMILY DOCS SUCCESS STORY Mentors often serve as safe havens during stormy times - whether supporting individual students or representing the discipline as a whole in a larger group. This month's mentoring story installment describes the importance of that safe haven role to a third-year medical student. Resources to help you serve as a safe haven mentor can be found at futurefamilydocs.org. Please submit your mentoring success story to Teresa Kulie, MD, University of Wisconsin, teresa.kulie@fammed.wisc.edu. Mentoring Success Story - Jill Omori, MD By some serendipitous grace I met my family medicine mentor, Jill Omori, MD, my first day of medical school. Since then, she has been intrinsic in bringing to life my idealistic and lofty dreams of making the world a better place through medicine. Heroic in effort yet humble in heart, she is also changing worlds in our school and community: as an unyielding advocate for expanding the educational curriculum, she is helping to grow a generation of more caring, empathetic, and socially aware physicians; as a community clinician, she helps to heal the lives of our most needy. There is a notion among some of my fellow students and staff at my medical school that the choice to become a family doctor is a default for those not good enough for other fields. In turn, these judgments are then internalized, exacerbating our second-class status with timid and spiritless answers to the question "What do you want to specialize in?" with qualifiers about sub-specialties or recoiling from the question entirely. However, Dr Omori is so universally adored and respected that she elevates the perception of family medicine. She has made it easier for me to stand and say with pride and conviction, “I want to be a family doctor.” Medical school can be an intense, overwhelming journey, when all we know about ourselves gets buried under the textbooks, lectures, and notorious socialization process. Not only has Dr Omori provided an anchor for me in the worst of these times, her encouraging nature and unwavering belief in me to do good in this world has helped me recognize and nurture my own unique capabilities. Her support makes me feel brave, and what higher accomplishment can be said of teachers than that they bestow students with the courage to seek their dreams? By Carrie Marshall, University of Hawaii The original article is found at the following website: http://www.stfm.org/messenger/2007/august/messenger.html#12