Quinn Cassar
Pronouns: He/Him
Research Mentor(s): Vitaliy Popov
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Department of Learning Health Sciences / Medicine
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 6 (3:40pm – 4:30pm)
Authors: Jessica Maisonneuve, Quinn Cassar, Kiera Butler, Vitaliy Popov
Abstract
Problem Statement: Formation of professional identity of dental students plays a significant role in their educational experiences, development of clinical competence, and understanding of social and professional responsibilities in the field of dentistry. Measuring that professional identity formation has proven to be difficult. This mixed-methods study examines reflective essays of the dental students’ learning experience during clinical rotations over one academic year as a means to measure professional identity growth. Method: Dental students completed 4 week externships in community clinics in each of their final 3 semesters of their training. After each externship they wrote a reflective essay using a personal experience to illustrate an example of personal professional growth. Each reflective essay addressed three different aspects of the rotations, such as their understanding of socioeconomic status or their understanding of weaknesses or strengths being in the rotations. We used an inductive and stepwise approach to generate a coding system to identify the key contributors to their professional identity development. A total of 33 essays were used to refine the coding scheme. Six main codes were distinguished: Understanding of Patients (perspective-taking), Understanding of Ethics, Perceived Confidence in one’s Competence to Perform, Motivation to Profession, Influences on Learning & Growth, and Interprofessional Care in Relation to Professional Growth. Results: Our project is currently continuing to analyze data and refine the coding scheme before applying it to the remaining dataset (N=300+ essays written by over 100 students). This project has made an important contribution thus far concerning the key contributors to their professional identity development that influence dental students specifically. Conclusion/implications: Students reflect on their clinical rotations in similar ways, illustrating the importance of a student’s interaction with patients, mentors, other care team members and the key themes they learn that have an influence on the formation of professional identity Furthermore, the change in attitude that the students exhibited towards both their patients and skills while displaying an expanded interest towards their career exhibits professional identity to be more evolving with each student’s experiences rather than being stagnant.
