Residents as Physicians: Best Practices for Faculty to Promote Professional Identity Formation in Continuity Clinic

Faculty play a powerful role in shaping residents' emerging professional identities, yet many lack a practical framework for aligning everyday teaching with this developmental process. Continuity clinic provides a particularly formative environment for residents' professional identity formation through longitudinal patient care and sustained precepting relationships. This perspective piece examines four established faculty practices-role modeling, deliberate observation and entrustment, guided reflection, and clinical sponsorship-that foster residents' professional identity formation in clinic and explores how these routine precepting behaviors contribute to residents' professional development. By recognizing and deliberately applying these practices, faculty can make professional values more explicit, support progressive autonomy, and help residents integrate clinical experiences into their evolving professional identities, regardless of their ultimate career paths.