Professional identity of doctors: Content, theoretical approaches, formation

The article provides a meta-synthesis of current publications devoted to the professional identity of medical workers. The article asks three questions: about the content of the professional identity of healthcare personnel, theoretical approaches to its study, as well as about the formation of professional identity. In answering the first question, five components of professional identity are identified: actions and behavior; knowledge and skills; values and beliefs; context and socialization; group and personal identity. In answering the second question, the most frequently encountered theoretical perspectives are: social, critical; individual and narrative. In answering the third question, three main groups of factors in the formation of professional identity are identified. The first factor highlighted the norms and expectations of future medical workers. As part of the educational process, students are faced with certain normative expectations that describe what they should be like as professionals. Such expectations can be implicit, transmitted through role models and relationships with other people (including outside the profession), or formulated explicitly, in educational materials, during teaching and practice, when becoming familiar with the doctor's code of ethics, etc. It is important to emphasize that such normative expectations relate not so much to knowledge and skills, but to personal qualities, value orientations, social and emotional intelligence, and role models that doctors should follow. For example, future nurses are expected to be caring, and doctors are expected to be free from cultural or social biases and capable of ethical decision-making. The second factor, practical experience, involves involvement in specific practices; the experience of certain experiences (both positive and negative) has a universal impact on the content and degree of professional identity. This category includes experience of interaction with patients, role models, and involvement in professional communications. The third factor, the culture of the profession, is understood as a set of certain ideas, values, traditions, systems of internal and external relations, which are also decisive in the formation of professional identity. In particular, understanding the hierarchy within a professional community and power relations are important for successfully managing professional relationships and careers, but can also create negative effects, such as regular overtime. At the same time, the article points to several shortcomings and limitations of research on professional identity in current literature. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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