Professional Identity Formation: Considerations for Athletic Training Education

Clinical education is a complex element of educational programs in health care. Understanding identity is important because how educators structure learning experiences and foster the development of professionals within these programs impacts students as they emerge into professional practice. This article discusses five cultural dimensions of personal professional identity: (1) Identity is a negotiated experience that is defined not only by how students define themselves, but also by how others see them; (2) Identity within a community is established by interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar cues encountered in the learning environment; (3) Identity is a factor of our self-defined learning trajectory, integrating where we have been with where we want to be in the future; (4) Identity is formed through the reconciliation of the multiple relationships into one emergent identity; and (5) Personal professional identity is formulated through the convergence of becoming a member of proximal groups as well as broader groups, such as the profession as a whole. This element of education should not be left to chance. Concerted efforts to embrace the various theories and principles related to collaborative and socially constructed engagement in the educational process should be taken so that the transition to the master's program yields confident, self-regulated practitioners who fully understand their role and possess a strong professional identity within the interprofessional health care market.