Exploring Professional Identity Development in Medical Laboratory Professional Students

Abstract

Despite being the fourth largest health profession in Canada, medical laboratory science is perhaps one of the most poorly studied and underrepresented health care fields. While substantial research exists surrounding more well-known health care professions like nursing and medicine, there has been a minimal exploration of the sociological, cultural, and educational aspects of the medical laboratory profession in Canada. Given educational programs and clinical experiences are central to professional socialization processes and professional identity formation in health care professions, this research explores this process in a cohort of medical laboratory science students in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Drawing from a conceptualization of professional identity development as a form of learning shaped through cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions of lived experience, I explored the individual and professional experiences of students in a contemporary medical laboratory training program. Utilizing a case study approach, the study focused on the experiences that occurred during students’ first substantive encounter with a clinical laboratory environment and evaluated how the clinical practicum served to affect their professional identity development, perspectives of the field, and view of the medical laboratory profession in a transformative way. Consistent with research in other health-related fields, findings indicated that clinical practicum serves as a particularly important transitional and transformational period for student medical laboratory professionals and is a time in which they reflect upon their attitudes, behaviours, roles, and experiences. This research concluded that exposure to the clinical realm serves to affect their sense of professional identity in meaningful ways.