Professional Identity Formation in Medical Education: Some Virtue-Based Insights

Issue: In 2010, the Carnegie Foundation published a call to reorient medical education in terms of the formation of identities rather than mere competencies, and the medical education literature on professional identity formation (PIF) has since grown rapidly. As medical learners navigate a hectic clinical learning environment fraught with challenges to professionalism and ethics, they must simultaneously orient their skills, behaviors, and evolving sense of professional identity. The medical education literature on PIF describes the psychosocial dimensions of that identity formation well. However, in its conceptual formulations, the literature risks underappreciating the pedagogical significance of the moral basis of identity formation—that is, the developing moral agencies and aspirations of learners to be good physicians. Evidence: Our conceptual analysis and argument build on a critical review of the medical education literature on PIF and draw on relevant insights from virtue ethics to deepen the conceptualization of PIF in moral, and not just psychosocial, terms. We show that a narrowly psychosocial view risks perpetuating institutional perceptions that can conceive professionalism norms primarily as standards of discipline or social control. By drawing on the conceptual resources of virtue ethics, we highlight not just the psychosocial development of medical learners but also their self-reflective, critical development as particular moral agents aspiring to embody the excellences of a good physician and, ultimately, to exhibit those traits and behaviors in the practice of medicine. Implications: We consider the pedagogical relevance of this insight. We show that drawing on virtue theory can more adequately orient medical pedagogy to socialize learners into the medical community in ways that nurture their personal growth as moral agents—in terms of their particular, restless aspirations to be a good physician and to flourish as such.