Self, Physician, and Specialty: A Qualitative Exploration of Medical Students’ Specialty Identity Formation During Undergraduate Medical Training

A physician's specialty is an integral part of their professional identity formation (PIF), not only determining the role they play in patient care but also shaping group interactions in the workplace. Prior work on PIF in medical students has focused on the development of a physician identity. However, little is known about how medical students might begin to develop divergent specialty-specific identities during medical school. Consequently, the authors aimed to explore how the process of specialty selection shapes PIF during undergraduate medical training and to develop a construct of specialty identity formation (SIF) as an important aspect of PIF.