194 - Solidifying Who We Are: A qualitative study demonstrating how a clinician educator course impacts professional identity formation

Publication Number: 194.6769

Jennifer C. Yu, Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States; Helen Wang, Stanford University School of Medicine, San Jose, CA, United States; Erica Lin, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States; Chris Cannavino, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, CA, United States; Su-Ting T. Li, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA, United States; Darcy Wooten, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States

Background: Clinician educator (CE) career paths are increasingly recognized in academic medicine. Development of a strong professional identity as a clinician educator can lead to a higher likelihood of pursuing a career as a CE. It is unclear how CE courses impact PIF. As more CE courses are created it is vital to incorporate elements that strengthen a physician’s professional identity as a clinician educator to ensure that we have a growing community of well trained, passionate CEs to train the next generation of physicians.

Objective: Determine how our CE course impacted participants’ professional identity as clinician educators.

Design/Methods: We created a longitudinal clinician educator course for subspecialty pediatric, internal medicine, and surgery fellows and early career faculty (ECF) that includes didactics and workshops on clinical teaching skills and career development, opportunities for teaching, and opportunities for med-ed scholarly work (Table 1). We conducted a qualitative study of CE course participants during the 2023-24 academic year to ascertain how the course impacted participants’ professional identity as clinician educators. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and deidentified. We iteratively, inductively coded transcripts using thematic analysis through a constructivist lens.

Results: We conducted 3 focus groups with 11 participants (3 faculty and 8 fellows). We identified six themes about how the CE course influenced professional identity (Table 2): 1) Opportunities to apply teaching and research skills, 2) Allowing time and means for self-reflection, 3) Delineation of milestones leading to a CE career, 4) Networking and community building, 5) Validation of CE role in academic medicine, and 6) Facilitation of career advancement opportunities.

Conclusion(s): Our study highlights aspects of a CE course that helped affirm participants’ professional identity as clinician educators across multiple dimensions. Our data provide specific areas that may impact professional identity formation of clinician educators. As institutions enrich the CE pipeline, this data can be used to create targeted courses that specifically emphasize professional identity formation to help participants achieve meaningful career success, as clinician educators are crucial to the training of the next generation of physicians.

Table 1
Clinical Educator Longitudinal Course Contents: Didactics, workshops, and teaching opportunities

Table 2
Themes, with illustrative quotes, demonstrating how the clinician educator course impacted participants' professional identity as a clinician educator