A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Medical Students’ Professional Identity

An increasing interest in medical students’ professional identity has been arousedamong Chinese scholars due to constant reports by media that fewer and fewer high schoolstudents choose to study medicine in the future and medical students want to give upmedical career after graduation. Previous researches have nearly been done within onecountry, but few studies have been conducted from a cross-cultural perspective. On onehand, the medical culture that a medical student is immersed in will greatly influence hisprofessional identity. On the other hand, a medical students’ professional identity canreflect the medical culture. For this reason, the current study is focused on measuringmedical students’ professional identity in China and America with a view to finding outsimilarities and differences between two countries.Under the theoretical framework of Grolevant’s and Wei Shuhua’s six dimensions,and on the base of successful trial by Zhang Lili to measure Chinese medical students’professional identity with the six dimensions, the author designed and did a survey amongmedical students in universities in both countries by revising and translating the existingscale of medical students’ professional identity. Results show that the general level ofAmerican medical students’ professional identity is significantly higher than Chinese. Withincreasing years of studying on medicine, medical students in both countries are reportedto have lower professional identity than before. Especially, those who have attendedclinical clerkship have lower professional identity than those who haven’t. Moresimilarities and differences between Chinese and American samples are analyzed by takinginto account cultural factors such as medical ethics, medical education, health care systemand doctor-patient relationship.In the last section, the thesis discussed implications for future studies and proposessuggestions on promoting Chinese medical students’ professional identity.