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The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation

In their interactions with patients and health care professionals during work-based learning, medical students are known to experience emotionally challenging situations that can evoke negative feelings. Students have to manage these emotions. Students learn and develop their professional identity f...

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Autores principales: Lönn, Annalena, Weurlander, Maria, Seeberger, Astrid, Hult, Håkan, Thornberg, Robert, Wernerson, Annika
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10184105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37184676
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-023-10229-8
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author Lönn, Annalena
Weurlander, Maria
Seeberger, Astrid
Hult, Håkan
Thornberg, Robert
Wernerson, Annika
author_facet Lönn, Annalena
Weurlander, Maria
Seeberger, Astrid
Hult, Håkan
Thornberg, Robert
Wernerson, Annika
author_sort Lönn, Annalena
collection PubMed
description In their interactions with patients and health care professionals during work-based learning, medical students are known to experience emotionally challenging situations that can evoke negative feelings. Students have to manage these emotions. Students learn and develop their professional identity formation through interactions with patients and members of the healthcare teams. Earlier studies have highlighted the issues involved with processing emotionally challenging situations, although studies concerning learning and professional identity formation in response to these experiences are rare. In this study, we explored medical students’ experiences of emotionally challenging situations in work-based learning, and the impact these experiences had on forming medical students’ professional identities. We conducted an analysis of narrative data (n = 85), using a constructivist grounded theory approach. The narratives were made up of medical students’ reflective essays at the end of their education (tenth term). The analysis showed that students’ main concern when facing emotionally challenging situations during their work-based education was the struggle to achieve and maintain a professional approach. They reported different strategies for managing their feelings and how these strategies led to diverse consequences. In the process, students also described arriving at insights into their own personal needs and shortcomings. We consider this development of self-awareness and resulting self-knowledge to be an important part of the continuously ongoing socialization process of forming a professional identity. Thus, experiencing emotionally challenging situations can be considered a unique and invaluable opportunity, as well as a catalyst for students’ development. We believe that highlighting the impact of emotions in medical education can constitute an important contribution to knowledge about the process of professional identity formation. This knowledge can enable faculty to provide students with more effective and sufficient support, facilitating their journey in becoming physicians.
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spelling pubmed-101841052023-05-16 The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation Lönn, Annalena Weurlander, Maria Seeberger, Astrid Hult, Håkan Thornberg, Robert Wernerson, Annika Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract Research In their interactions with patients and health care professionals during work-based learning, medical students are known to experience emotionally challenging situations that can evoke negative feelings. Students have to manage these emotions. Students learn and develop their professional identity formation through interactions with patients and members of the healthcare teams. Earlier studies have highlighted the issues involved with processing emotionally challenging situations, although studies concerning learning and professional identity formation in response to these experiences are rare. In this study, we explored medical students’ experiences of emotionally challenging situations in work-based learning, and the impact these experiences had on forming medical students’ professional identities. We conducted an analysis of narrative data (n = 85), using a constructivist grounded theory approach. The narratives were made up of medical students’ reflective essays at the end of their education (tenth term). The analysis showed that students’ main concern when facing emotionally challenging situations during their work-based education was the struggle to achieve and maintain a professional approach. They reported different strategies for managing their feelings and how these strategies led to diverse consequences. In the process, students also described arriving at insights into their own personal needs and shortcomings. We consider this development of self-awareness and resulting self-knowledge to be an important part of the continuously ongoing socialization process of forming a professional identity. Thus, experiencing emotionally challenging situations can be considered a unique and invaluable opportunity, as well as a catalyst for students’ development. We believe that highlighting the impact of emotions in medical education can constitute an important contribution to knowledge about the process of professional identity formation. This knowledge can enable faculty to provide students with more effective and sufficient support, facilitating their journey in becoming physicians. Springer Netherlands 2023-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10184105/ /pubmed/37184676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-023-10229-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research
Lönn, Annalena
Weurlander, Maria
Seeberger, Astrid
Hult, Håkan
Thornberg, Robert
Wernerson, Annika
The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title_full The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title_fullStr The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title_full_unstemmed The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title_short The impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
title_sort impact of emotionally challenging situations on medical students’ professional identity formation
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10184105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37184676
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-023-10229-8
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