Role modelling in professional identity formation: a systematic scoping review

Abstract

Background Role modelling’s pivotal part in the nurturing of a physician’s professional identity remains poorly understood. To overcome these gaps, this review posits that as part of the mentoring spectrum, role modelling should be considered in tandem with mentoring, supervision, coaching, tutoring and advising. This provides a clinically relevant notion of role modelling whilst its effects upon a physician’s thinking, practice and conduct may be visualised using the Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP). Methods A Systematic Evidence Based Approach guided systematic scoping review was conducted on articles published between 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2021 in the PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, and ERIC databases. This review focused on the experiences of medical students and physicians in training (learners) given their similar exposure to training environments and practices. Results 12,201 articles were identified, 271 articles were evaluated, and 145 articles were included. Concurrent independent thematic and content analysis revealed five domains: existing theories, definitions, indications, characteristics, and the impact of role modelling upon the four rings of the RToP. This highlights dissonance between the introduced and regnant beliefs and spotlights the influence of the learner’s narratives, cognitive base, clinical insight, contextual considerations and belief system on their ability to detect, address and adapt to role modelling experiences. Conclusion Role modelling’s ability to introduce and integrate beliefs, values and principles into a physician’s belief system underscores its effects upon professional identity formation. Yet, these effects depend on contextual, structural, cultural and organisational influences as well as tutor and learner characteristics and the nature of their learner-tutor relationship. The RToP allows appreciation of these variations on the efficacy of role modelling and may help direct personalised and longitudinal support for learners.

Enhancing self-care education amongst medical students: a systematic scoping review

“…Variations of the terms “self-care education”, “medical students” and “medical education” were applied. This timeframe was selected to facilitate a viable and sustainable research process and to account for prevailing manpower and time constraints [ 23 ]. These searches were also accompanied by ‘snowballing’ of the references of included articles to ensure a more comprehensive review [ 24 ].…”

Insights into discrepancies in professional identities and role models in undergraduate medical education in the context of affective burden

“…The curriculum provides the necessary knowledge and practical skills taught by health professionals, although several research studies have also examined the role of teachers as role models of professional behaviour and in the mediation of values, attitudes and professional behaviour in health care ( 13 – 15 ). Medical students are therefore also exposed to the values and attitudes of their fellow students, lecturers and university mentors ( 13 , 16 , 17 ). The socialisation process during medical education therefore plays an important role in the development of interprofessional physicians in the clinical learning environment ( 18 – 20 ).…”

Assessing the effects of a mentoring program on professional identity formation

“…These mentoring diaries are completed by mentees and reviewed by mentors during bi-weekly and ad hoc meetings. A relatively new addition, the mentoring diaries are designed to chart PMI mentees’ development and evaluate their reflective practice [ 17 , 18 ]. Mentoring diary entries are reviewed by an independent researcher who does not share direct contact or a professional relationship with the mentees in order to safeguard the PMI mentees’ anonymity and privacy.…”

“…SEBA’s constructivist approach and relativist lens [ 5 ] are best placed to account for PIF as a sociocultural construct [ 34 ] shaped by regnant clinical, personal, professional, ethical, psychosocial, cultural and societal factors. The sociocultural nature of PIF is also informed by the mentee’s working styles, motivations, abilities, experience and goals vis-à-vis the mentor and mentee’s individual historical, demographic, socio-cultural, ideological and contextual narratives and the nature, context and duration of their interactions [ 17 , 18 ]. The stages of SEBA are displayed in Fig.…”

“…In the absence of an effective tool to evaluate PIF, the expert team advised on the design of semi-structured interview questions drawn from recently published reviews and articles on PIF and mentoring that focused on the PMI framework [ 10 , 11 , 20 , 38 ], CNEP mentoring [ 6 , 10 , 20 , 39 ], mentoring programs [ 19 , 23 , 40 – 42 ], mentoring practice [ 21 , 43 ], mentoring assessments [ 38 , 44 – 47 ], the mentoring environment [ 48 ] and the influence of the host organisation on the mentoring process [ 47 ] published in PubMed, SCOPUS, ERIC, Google Scholar, and Embase databases. This process was guided by the Dual-SEBA guided systematic scoping reviews (SSRs) that had been shown to systematically map and identify key features of PIF [ 5 , 18 , 49 , 50 ] and mentoring [ 6 , 7 , 20 , 39 , 49 ]. Adopting SEBA guided SSRs of PIF and mentoring that complied with the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews, the research team used the results to inform the design of the tools.…”