Less than 15% of medical school students are from minoritized backgrounds, and early evidence shows their professional identity formation journey is more challenging. The in-depth interviews below shed light on their experiences and reveal crucial insights into the intersection of personal identity and medical culture.

“We asked: How do participants understand their personal identity, and how it fits in—or does not—with the medical culture? Methods: Participants were nine third-year medical students at a historically white and rural institution who self-identified as being members of at least one group that is historically underrepresented in medicine. Participants were interviewed one-on-one, twice, using a semi-structured guide with open-ended questions. Data were collected and analysed simultaneously, using the principles of grounded theory. Results indicate that two themes speak to the process of PIF for minoritized students within the dominant cultures of medicine and medical education. First, participants experienced a complex push-pull of their personal identities: they pulled their personal identities into their professional development in positive ways, but also sometimes found it necessary to push their personal identities away and make them less salient in order to be successful. Second, this push-pull contributed to feelings of self-doubt and isolation. In conclusion, our results suggest that existing PIF frameworks are too simplistic with regard to the individual person. We therefore suggest that the social psychology concept of identity theory might appropriately complicate how we think about what the individual person brings to the PIF process.1

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References

  1. Volpe, R. L., Hopkins, M. M., Geathers, J., Smith, C. W., & Cuffee, Y. (2021). Negotiating professional identity formation in medicine as an ‘outsider’: The experience of professionalization for minoritized medical students. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, 1, 100017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2021.100017

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