Abstract

This paper reports some findings from a phenomenographic study of a cohort of second year medical students. The overall aim of this study is to explore what medical students early in their education learn from other healthcare professionals such as nurses, social workers, and midwives, and how this kind of interprofessional learning influences the development of ‘thinking as a doctor’. Data were collected by in-depth interviews and analyzed by using a modified form of the phenomenographic analysis and a thematic analysis. The learning that medical students valued in encountering other healthcare professionals involved education in professional attributes and behaviour, team work, interpersonal skills, and clinical skills. The development of ‘thinking as a doctor’ was identified in terms of ‘difference’ - a result of exposure to, and reflection upon, cultural difference across professional groups. Such findings imply that medical students’ development of ‘thinking as a doctor’ offers a professional identity that is constructed as difference between bounded professional groups. Medical educators should be aware of the pervasive influence of the culture of the ‘Other’ as healthcare professional on medical students’ professional association and identity construction. The movement from ‘thinking as a student’ to ‘thinking as a doctor’ can be seen not as a private cognitive event but also as a cultural feature of ‘difference’. Exploratory and explanatory frameworks borrowed from cultural studies could come to illuminate issues in medical education.