Modelling the factors that affect medical students’ occupational identity in long COVID: an integrated perspective of motivation, opportunity and ability

Abstract

The medical workforce plays a critical role in building resilience in the medical system and society to respond to long COVID. The threat of career pressure and the proliferation of social media disinformation have combined to reduce medical workers’ occupational identity, triggering a wave of medical staff resignations all over the world. There is an urgent need to investigate the development of medical students’ occupational identity. Based on characteristics of medical students, this study builds on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework and develops a comprehensive theoretical model to illustrate the predictors of medical students’ occupational identity to find ways to stabilize the subsequent medical workforce pool. The results show that medical students’ occupational identity is affected by motivation, opportunity and ability factors. The results call for improving motivation cultivation and practice environment. The newly discovered role of media exposure not only provides a new way to enhance occupational identity, but also contributes to the follow-up exploration of the relationship between media environment and occupational identity.