Effects of Clinical Education on Establishments of Professional Identities among Students

Abstract

In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey on students in department of physical therapy in our university to examine the effect of clinical education on their professional identity development. The survey was made in an academic year of 2003 in which our university was incorporating two curriculums; new curriculum for freshman and sophomore and old curriculum for junior and senior. Therefore, we also collected additional data in the academic year of 2005 to clarify an influence of the different curriculum on this study.
Our study showed that professional identity among students tended to be higher in freshman and sophomore than in junior and senior. In addition, encounter with professional role model during clinical education was found effective to increase student's professional identity. Especially, clinical early exposure applied to freshman and sophomore students under the new curriculum increased their opportunity to meet a role model and strengthened their professional identity. However, we need to take possible effects of an educational environment into consideration.