Medical training as a transformative experience: an analysis of doctorhood to question the professional identity formation paradigm

Abstract

This paper questions the Professional Identity Formation (PIF) paradigm by posing an alternative approach to medical students’ transformative experience using the hidden curriculum framework and Lindemann’s account of personal identity. The aim is to ascertain what is the social identity of physicians that actually operates in the students’ transformation in Mexico. By using a combination of qualitative research methods (26 semi-structured interviews, virtual ethnography, and autoethnographic materials), this research explores Mexican students’ transformative experience as a process through which they acquire a new social identity, doctorhood. The study results show that doctorhood is represented by socially shared narratives that portray physicians by comparing them to gods and superheroes, setting requirements on how students and physicians should perform this identity during social interaction. As a consequence, becoming a physician implies turning tougher and expressing it in different ways: preferably through an authoritarian, unbreakable and detaching character, but not through the evil character that some physicians perform by being bad-tempered, dishonest, demotivated, and insensitive. The conclusion is that doctorhood is a two-edged sword that can explain both professional and unprofessional behaviors among medical students and physicians in Mexico. This presents new possibilities to redirect the PIF paradigm around the world.