Professional Identity Formation in Indian Undergraduate Medical Students

Medical training in India is experiencing a paradigm shift. The competency-based medical education (CBME) for undergraduate medical training was adopted from the admission session 2019. The Indian Medical Graduate (IMG) was identified under CBME, by explicitly documenting its roles viz. clinician, professional, communicator, leader and life-long learner. In the recently released amended guidelines, two additional roles of IMG have been added. Looking at the roles of the IMG, it can be inferred that professionalism is one of the core roles assigned to IMG, and most other roles like - clinician, leader, and communicator fall under the broad definition of role as professional. It is argued that the objective of the curriculum should not only be to equip the students for identifying their professional roles but to support them to develop their professional identities. The potential of the CBME to equip the teachers and students to develop the professional identity of students is adequately supported by literature. However, the professional identity of IMG has not been defined to date, and no structured framework to develop this professional identity of the undergraduate students in the Indian context is available. The conceptual paper is an effort to define the professional identity of IMG and provide a framework to develop their professional identity.