title: May I see your ID, please? An explorative study of the professional identity of undergraduate medical education leaders.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The mission of undergraduate medical education leaders is to strive towards the enhancement of quality of medical education and health care. The aim of this qualitative study is, with the help of critical perspectives, to contribute to the research area of undergraduate medical education leaders and their identity formation; how can the identity of undergraduate medical education leaders be defined and further explored from a power perspective?
  
  
  METHODS
  In this explorative study, 14 educational leaders at a medical programme in Scandinavia were interviewed through semi-structured interviews. The data was analysed through Moustakas' structured, phenomenological analysis approach and then pattern matched with Gee's power-based identity model.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Educational leaders identify themselves more as mediators than leaders and do not feel to any larger extent that their professional identity is authorised by the university. These factors potentially create difficulties when trying to communicate with medical teachers, often also with a weaker sense of professional identity, about medical education.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The perceptions of the professional identity of undergraduate medical education leaders provide us with important notions on the complexities on executing their important mission to develop medical education: their perceptions of ambiguity towards the process of trying to lead teachers toward educational development and a perceived lack of authorisation of their work from the university level. These are important flaws to observe and correct when improving the context in which undergraduate medical education leaders are trying to develop and improve undergraduate medical programmes. A practical outcome of the results of this study is the facilitation of design of faculty development programmes for educational leaders in undergraduate medial education.
authors.affiliation: Medical Case Centre, Department of Medicine (Huddinge), Karolinska Institutet, M54 SE-141 86, Stockholm, Sweden. kristina.sundberg@ki.se.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sundberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Josephson
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health, Social Care & Education, Kingston University & St George's, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Reeves
authors.affiliation: Medical Case Centre, Department of Medicine (Huddinge), Karolinska Institutet, M54 SE-141 86, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nordquist
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005180:Faculty, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012933:Social Identification