Year 1: Professional Identity Formation

The illustration contains the following questions: “Will I be a good doctor? Will my family be proud? Will I ensure I uphold the trust of my patients? Will I represent my community in the best light? Will I be condemned to harsh criticism if I make a mistake? Will I be happy? Will I be ready? Will I be trusted? Will I uphold the Hippocratic oath? Will I be successful? Will my work have a positive impact on society? Will I be able to achieve my goals both personally and professionally? Will I still be me?”

My art piece illustrates that behind the eyes of a poised and ambitious medical student, I’m acutely aware of the demands that habitually follows this career, and I sometimes question my capacity to carry out my responsibilities for the future both to the highest standards and consistently. To clarify, this isn’t a diminishment of my confidence but merely an acknowledgement that I will need to remind myself that I chose to enter this profession fundamentally to help others through my personal strengths and interest within the scientific and healthcare field. Upon reflection, I’m aware that I am characteristically confident, nevertheless introspectively, I recognise that I am both excited and occasionally have moments of apprehension about the prospects of this vocation.

I wrote this poem about how my identity changed once I became a medical student. At the start it was new and exciting, ‘aesthetic’ as one may call It, however, as the workload and pressure increased the balance of personal and work life tipped. Therefore, I wrote this poem as a dialogue between the degree and I, struggling for power. As an 18-year-old, being responsible for paying rent, buying groceries, and having a good social life as well studying a demanding degree is tough! This was a big jump in my life which caused many changes, from people to location thus I wanted to convey the fear and excitement that I felt. Furthermore, when you become a medical student, it is easy to let this identify define you and let Imposter syndrome take over, where you constantly compare yourself to others and feel guilty for the doing “less” work. Although I am nearly done with first year of medical school, I still feel this way sometimes. My work life balance is still not great but overtime I hope to establish it. At the end of the poem, with the line-'I love being you'- I submit to the fact that although being a medical student is only a part of my identity, it is a larger and a more important part therefore I will invest more time into polishing it, to make it the best possible version.

“Starting line” is an image of myself crossing the finish line of a race and becoming a medical student. In this piece, I attempted to illustrate how my identity has changed since becoming a medical student.

The audience in this image represents how I am viewed by my family, friends, and acquaintances as they watch me.

I have split the audience in half where the audience on the left are holding up signs in black that represent the different assumptions people had about me prior to becoming a medical student, compared to the audience on the right that are holding signs illustrating what people assume about me now that I am a medical student. This allowed for me to describe how views about me have changed since becoming a medical student.

The writing on the track represents various aspects of the experience of being a medical student. Similar to the audience, I decided to split the track in half where the black writing represents what I thought becoming a medical student was like compared to the red writing which highlights my current experience. I have deliberately made the track on the right-hand side larger than the writing on the left side to reflect on how there is much more to the experience of being a medical student that you can’t appreciate until you become one. I chose to structure the audience similarly to the track so that the signs in the audience could be compared to the words on the track to highlight how assumptions others have may not be correct or accurate.

On the red tape at the finish line, I decided to put the word “start” rather than finish because despite this being an achievement, it is just the beginning of a great journey ahead of me.