Session: Diversity and Inclusion in Medical Education
“It creates a divide” : Minoritized students’ perceptions on the process of professional identity formation
Saturday, October 14, 2023
1:15 PM – 2:30 PM ET
Location: Heron (Fourth Floor)
The empirical literature on professional identity formation (PIF) in medicine has focused on a generic experience of PIF, without considering that trainees of different backgrounds may have very different PIF experiences (1-4). The present qualitative study explores this gap in the literature by examining the PIF of a diversely minoritized group of medical students in a rural medical school setting.
Participants were 15 first (n=5), second (n=5) and third (n=5) year medical students who self-identified as being members of at least one group who is historically underrepresented in medicine. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and then transcriptions were coded using an inductive, phenomenological approach to thematic analysis.
Findings suggest that participants struggled with: finding a trusted friend group; perceiving that they were different both from other students and also from the stereotype of a physician; and feeling pressure to change their personal identity for the sake of achieving the perceived ideal professional identity.
This is a small, qualitative sample from a single institution. However, it is among the first studies to explore the PIF experience of a diverse group of minoritized medical students. These early findings suggest that the medical education community may benefit from more explicit acknowledgment in educational practices and research that every student is different, and thus students’ experience of PIF will not proceed lockstep.
Rebecca Volpe, PhD HEC-C – Penn State College of Medicine; Lauren Jodi Van Scoy – Pulmonary Critcal Care – Penn State College of Medicine; Candis Watts Smith – Political Science – Duke University