• Jim Crossley and Pirashanthie Vivekananda-Schmidt.
• Academic Unit of Medical Education, University of Sheffield, Firth House, UK. j.crossley@shef.ac.uk
• Med Teach. 2009 Dec 1; 31 (12): e603-7.

BackgroundProfessional self-identity is a 'state of mind' -- identifying one's-self as a member of a professional group. Delayed professional self-identity is a barrier to successful transition from student to professional. Current trends in medical education limit student doctors' legitimate peripheral participation and may retard their developing professional self-identity compared with other health and social care students.AimsDevelop a tool to monitor the development of professional self-identity to operate across the different health and social care professions and evaluate the tool with student doctors before wider data collection.MethodContent analysis of relevant curricula, mapped to professional standards documents, defined initial content. Field tests across 10 professional groups refined questionnaire items. A cross-sectional study on 496 student doctors evaluated validity on the basis of internal structure and relationships with external variables.ResultsThe 9-item questionnaire indicates a three-factor structure reflecting 'interpersonal tasks', 'generic attributes' and 'profession-specific elements'. Students with greater previous experience of health or social care roles, and students with a more positive attitude to qualification had significantly more advanced scores than their peers. Scores advanced through the curriculum showing step changes after the start of clinical attachments.ConclusionsThe data provides sufficient evidence of validity with student doctors to justify wider data collection.

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