Healthcare Crises and Professional Identity Formation: Implications for Medical Education

Professional identity formation (PIF) occurs through participation, relationships, and reflection in clinical learning environments. Healthcare crises can disrupt these processes while prompting learners to reassess their professional roles and responsibilities. This narrative review examines PIF during healthcare crises and considers the implications for Korean medical education following the medico-political conflict over expanded medical school admissions that began in February 2024. Three main points emerge from the review. First, crises constrain PIF by disrupting the socialization pathways through which students participate in the professional community, but they may also act as disorienting dilemmas that prompt students to reconsider their roles and responsibilities. Second, comparison with pandemic-related educational disruption and junior doctors’ industrial action in the United Kingdom highlights three distinctive features of the Korean medico-political conflict: mass resignations by residents and reported resignations by some faculty members constrained clinical socialization; students chose to leave but struggled to decide individually when to return; and prelicensure learners became parties to a national policy dispute amid negative public evaluation. Third, medical schools should provide institutional support for curricular reflection on crisis experiences, create structured opportunities for learners to interpret conflict experiences in terms of health policy and social accountability rather than cynicism, and offer mentoring to students alongside peer support for residents and faculty. Whether a crisis impedes or fosters professional identity formation may depend on the educational conditions available to help learners interpret their experiences.