Embedding Identity and How Clinical Teachers Reconcile Their Multiple Professional Identities to Meet Overlapping Demands at Work.

Clinical teachers have multifaceted identities, to which they give a sense, manage, and integrate into their daily practice. Participants recognized an embedding identity and looked for common points between the identities it contained, which allowed them to meaningfully reconcile the different demands from their overlapping professional identities. Thus, this research introduces the notion of embedding identity as a strategy to make sense of many professional identities. Variability in the embedding identities depicted in this investigation suggests the fluid and contextualized character of professional identity development. How participants saw themselves also influenced how they behaved and interacted with others accordingly. Understanding clinical teacher identity development enriches current perspectives of what it is like to be one of these medical professionals. Faculty development programs ought to consider these perspectives to better support clinical teachers in meeting the overlapping demands in education and patient care.