Professional Identity Formation in Medical Education for Humanistic, Resilient Physicians

TLDR

Recent calls for an expanded perspective on medical education emphasize the complexities of professional identity formation, challenging educators to facilitate its active, integrative development within both formal and informal curricula. The study seeks to identify effective strategies to scaffold critical reflective learning and practice skills that support the iterative professional identity formation of humanistic, resilient health care professionals. The authors introduce three pedagogic innovations—interactive reflective writing, mindful clinical practice modules, and e‑portfolio and faculty coaching strategies—to foster reflective capacity, resilience, and professional development. The innovations serve as bridges from theory to practice, integrating guided reflection, mentorship, mindfulness, feedback, and collaborative learning to enrich PIF and potentially improve quality of care and resilient patient interactions.

Abstract

Recent calls for an expanded perspective on medical education and training include focusing on complexities of professional identity formation (PIF). Medical educators are challenged to facilitate the active constructive, integrative developmental process of PIF within standardized and personalized and/or formal and informal curricular approaches. How can we best support the complex iterative PIF process for a humanistic, resilient health care professional? How can we effectively scaffold the necessary critical reflective learning and practice skill set for our learners to support the shaping of a professional identity? The authors present three pedagogic innovations contributing to the PIF process within undergraduate and graduate medical education (GME) at their institutions. These are (1) interactive reflective writing fostering reflective capacity, emotional awareness, and resiliency (as complexities within physician–patient interactions are explored) for personal and professional development; (2) synergistic teaching modules about mindful clinical practice and resilient responses to difficult interactions, to foster clinician resilience and enhanced well-being for effective professional functioning; and (3) strategies for effective use of a professional development e-portfolio and faculty development of reflective coaching skills in GME. These strategies as "bridges from theory to practice" embody and integrate key elements of promoting and enriching PIF, including guided reflection, the significant role of relationships (faculty and peers), mindfulness, adequate feedback, and creating collaborative learning environments. Ideally, such pedagogic innovations can make a significant contribution toward enhancing quality of care and caring with resilience for the being, relating, and doing of a humanistic health care professional.