Will the Real Medical Teacher Stand Up and be Counted?

Academia demands of its dons a life of ideals, commitment, striving and timelessness in fulfilling intellectual self-actualisation and imbuing the same spirit in the students they serve. The hallowed portals of academic medicine bring the additional, inbuilt mandate of patient care with the onerous responsibility of handling life and death on a regular basis. Opting for a career in contemporary medical education demands a balanced contribution to teaching, clinical service and research. Somewhere in the prioritisation of these roles there appears to be a worrying diminution of a fourth dimension: the vital need for mentoring that a medical teacher can and should offer to a medical student.1 A brief introspection on the compelling arguments for mentoring and the opportunities that exist to achieve this maverick role is made in the succeeding paragraphs.