Identity Construction of the Medical Educator Through Learning and Writing

Abstract

In the previous three chapters, we have emphasized that construction of identity is central to medical education. Indeed, what a medical education sets out to do may be described in terms of identity construction, as medical students become doctors and as doctors become hospital specialists or community generalists. In Chap. 5, we defined identity as being ‘positioned’—by historical, cultural and social influences. We distinguished identity from personality, suggesting that identities are made, or socially constructed, rather than given and that identities can be fluid and multiple. As Bauman (2004, pp. 15–16) suggests, identities are ‘invented’ rather than ‘discovered.’ We noted that amongst the professions, medicine in particular is characterized by the strength of the vocation, quoting Montgomery’s (2006, p. 166) suggestion that ‘medical students have committed themselves to a self-altering course of study.’ We compared this with Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘self forming’—a way of describing the construction (or production) of identity as a style of life. We then looked in detail at how identity construction of contemporary doctors is rapidly changing thanks to new contexts and structures for clinical work and emergent understanding of what it is to be ‘professional,’ involving new forms of therapeutic relationships with patients, collaborative relations with colleagues and accountability to the public.