Reframing Medical Education to Support Professional Identity Formation

Abstract

Teaching medical professionalism is a fundamental component of medical education. The objective is to ensure that students understand the nature of professionalism and its obligations and internalize the value system of the medical profession. The recent emergence of interest in the medical literature on professional identity formation gives reason to reexamine this objective. The unstated aim of teaching professionalism has been to ensure the development of practitioners who possess a professional identity. The teaching of medical professionalism therefore represents a means to an end.The principles of identity formation that have been articulated in educational psychology and other fields have recently been used to examine the process through which physicians acquire their professional identities. Socialization-with its complex networks of social interaction, role models and mentors, experiential learning, and explicit and tacit knowledge acquisition-influences each learner, causing them to gradually "think, act, and feel like a physician."The authors propose that a principal goal of medical education be the development of a professional identity and that educational strategies be developed to support this new objective. The explicit teaching of professionalism and emphasis on professional behaviors will remain important. However, expanding knowledge of identity formation in medicine and of socialization in the medical environment should lend greater logic and clarity to the educational activities devoted to ensuring that the medical practitioners of the future will possess and demonstrate the qualities of the "good physician."

Social support in the workplace for physicians in specialization training

“…Nevertheless, especially in a work-life context, interest has been on merely stress buffering. In the context of medical workplace learning, however, both identity and relational functions are important, because they work toward the objectives of specialization training, toward professional identity formation [32]. Every senior is an important role model in the identity formation process [36], and it is extremely important to be aware that every professional encounter may reinforce or hinder the process of professional identity formation.…”

“…Professional identity can be seen as a representation of one’s self, which is formed over time in stages through an internalization of the norms, values, and characteristics of one’s medical profession [32]. Professional medical identity is dynamic, and it changes throughout one’s life and career [33].…”

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“…As facilitators, we would focus on this student's professional development and socialization into the profession while maintaining her core ethical values [8,9]. She is idealistic and wishes to serve the indigent.…”

“…In ethics as well as other aspects of medicine, the practitioner considers if outcomes are optimal and, if not, what might have been done better. In this way, moral development progresses alongside professional identity formation as a lifelong process [8][9][10]. We will begin this paper with a case illustrating how ethics can be learned and then taught through reflection-inaction and reflection-on-action.…”

Governing for Excellence in the Social Care Sector - The Role of Self-Governance in Ireland's Evolving Social Care Profession

“…Like any other professional programme of learning, theory and practice cannot exist as non-related parts, as the sense of becoming can only be achieved by the merging and integration of both parts. The role of academic teams is to require the student not just to think, but act and feel like a professional during this learning (Dall'Alba 2009, Cruess et al 2014. It begins on the first day of their programme and is embedded throughout all learning, presented as a journey towards the goal of supporting students to graduate and transition to become the professional self.…”