Identity, identification and medical education: why should we care?

This paper aims to provide an overview of some current thinking about identity and identification with the aim of highlighting some of the core underlying processes that have relevance for medical educationists and researchers. These processes include aspects that occur within embodied individuals (e.g. the development of multiple identities and how these are conceptualised), processes specifically to do with interactional aspects of identity (e.g. how identities are constructed and co-constructed through talk) and institutional processes of identity (e.g. the influence of patterns of behaviour within specific hierarchical settings).

Developing a systematic understanding into the processes through which medical students develop their identities will facilitate the development of educational strategies, placing medical students' identification at the core of medical education.