Abstract:

There is scare literature looking at the effect of change from a senior position in the Health Care (HC) setting to a less senior position in an academic setting and the challenges that this transition could pose. For Health Care Professionals (HCPs) leaving the clinical setting, this shift and identification with an academic community can prove challenging.

Since professionalism has been an important aspect of health care education the emergence of professional identity formation as an important concept has led to qualified health care professionals having their own professional identity from qualification. A study by Smith and Boyd (2012), concluded that individuals from a clinical background also hold strong practitioner identities developed further through professional socialisation and as such, individuals may find it difficult to adapt or develop a new academic identity, if ever.

On changing one work environment for another, Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) describes how newcomers become experienced members and eventually old timers of a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). This was an important area to the research about level of contribution and how new academics perceive this as the lecturer may struggle to find their new self and identity

This research aimed to explore this concept by interviewing HCP`s that have moved into a lecturer position in HC in a UK University setting. Interviews can be used to explore the views, experiences, beliefs and motivations of individual participants whilst focus group uses group dynamics to generate qualitative data (Bell, 2010). It was anticipated that interviews would draw out more personal views and experiences beneficial for this research rather than a quantitative design approach with prescriptive questions.

The research was primarily exploratory, being used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations about an individual’s move from HCS into higher education to gain an insight into the HCP`s reasons for the transition. As well as this, the individual’s professional identity was explored as well as social construction and becoming a health care lecturer as part of a multi-disciplinary health care education provider in higher education.

The results and findings of the research will be discussed as well as future recommendations.

Keywords:

Professional Identity, Health Care Professionals, University Setting, Socialisation.