{"id":302,"date":"2021-03-09T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/fmstel\/?p=302"},"modified":"2021-04-19T11:36:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T10:36:32","slug":"communities-of-practice-and-building-a-professional-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/fmstel\/2021\/03\/09\/communities-of-practice-and-building-a-professional-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Communities of Practice and Building a Professional Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was able to present an instance of FMS Journal Club in February 2021, and chose to present the paper Medicine as a Community of Practice: Implications for Medical Education (Cruess, Cruess and Steinert, 2018)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Communities of practice can guide the development of interventions to make medical education more effective and can help both learners and educators better cope with medical education\u2019s complexity.”<\/p>Cruess, Cruess and Steinert, 2018<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The paper suggests the framework of the Community of Practice (CoP) for activities in medical education, specifically, cultivating a sense of belonging and professional identity associated with that community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors put forward a long list of recommendations as to how CoPs as a framework can be embedded. The area I was most interested in was that of helping people to join these communities, particularly in relation to forming professional identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the key elements is that of regular meaningful interactions. This goes beyond simple matters of curriculum, but also incorporates something of a pastoral side. As well as bolstering students’ confidence in their skills, these interactions help students to form their identities as aspiring professional practitioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While video conferencing software offers a fairly rich interactive experience, there are many non-synchronous tools that provide arenas for interaction as well. The tool chosen is not the most important part – the important part is the regular, high-quality authentic interactions that can be facilitated between students and others with more experienced positions within their communities of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this look like in practice?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n