The personal dimension of allied health professional identity: A scoping review in health sciences literature / Die persönliche Dimension der beruflichen Identität von Gesundheitsfachkräften: ein Scoping-Review in der gesundheitswissenschaftlichen Literatur

In spite of widespread research into professional identity (Burford et al., 2014; Feller & Berendonk, 2020; Fitzgerald, 2020; Goldie, 2012; Kwakman & Schilder, 2005; Monrouxe & Rees, 2017; Rees & Monrouxe, 2018; Ruijters, 2015), the multilayered and multidiscoursal nature of the subject makes it difficult to define professional identity in a straightforward way. According to Beijaard et al. (2004), Trede et al. (2012), and Fitzgerald (2020), a clear definition of professional identity is missing because of the multi-discoursal nature of the subject. Krueger (2008), upon considering some of the discussion-leading descriptions of professional identity, provides the following description of professional identity: “Acquiring and demonstrating the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that characterize a profession, such as education, rights or medicine; recognition as a member of a particular profession” (Krueger, 2008, p. 241). Schein, in his turn, describes it as the constellation of attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences through which people define themselves in a professional role (Schein, 1999). In medical literature, professional identity is often described as ‘thinking, acting and feeling as a doctor’ or another healthcare professional (Cruess et al., 2014). Looking in greater detail at descriptions of professional identity in the literature, we find two recurring elements. Firstly, professional identity seems to stand for the living-through of the individual's profession, which is like a red thread running through the actions, thoughts, and feelings belonging to the profession, in which the history of the development of the profession is still reflected on the present-day professional (Clouston & Whitcombe, 2008; Fitzgerald, 2020; Walsh, 2018). Secondly, in any description of professional identity, we always find a reference that it is not merely professional knowledge and actions that are important, but that the personal dimension plays a significant role as well (Fitzgerald, 2020; Monrouxe, 2010; Trede et al., 2012).

The personal dimension is not only described, but there are also suggestions that the personal dimension sometimes creates friction between different professional values (Fitzgerald, 2020). Helmich et al. (2017) describe this as the struggle between sensemaking through a personal set of values and beliefs, and sensemaking through the instrumental information of protocols. Such value conflicts lead to feelings of ambiguity in the personal dimension of healthcare professionals. Feelings of ambiguity in the professional context can be highly emotional and are caused by reflection on oneself from different dimensions of professional identity, that each have their own norms and rules (Helmich et al., 2017; Jarvis & Trodd, 2008). Conflicts between values in the personal dimension and professional values, can have the effect that AHPs experience internal tensions at critical moments in their professional activity (Fitzgerald, 2020; Helmich et al., 2017; Jarvis & Trodd, 2008).

To understand the personal dimension, we will explore the concept in question. The personal dimension can be defined as a set of personal components that have a substantial impact on professional identity and frequently cause tensions in that role (Bushby et al., 2015; Fitzgerald, 2020; Lawson et al., 2017; McMahon et al., 2016; Nicholls & Gibson, 2010). Although much research has already been conducted on personal components, in-depth research into the personal dimension appears to be lacking, in spite of a clear need to deepen our understanding of this topic (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016). In the literature on education and teacher identity, in which much more research focused on the personal dimension has been performed, Beijaard (2009) describes the personal dimension as composed of a set of specific personal, sociodemographic characteristics, the personal biography and learning history of the professional, and the beliefs s/he holds about the profession. According to Kelchtermans (2009), teachers develop an interpretative framework that arises from personal values and beliefs, which is shaped and reshaped in the course of their career through interaction with teacher colleagues and the impact of the social, cultural, and structural conditions in their working environment. Ruijters (2015) emphasizes the interaction between social identity and the personal dimension as well. In order to understand the individual professional, one should start from her/his specific personal, sociodemographic characteristics. For example, a professional's perfectionism is something partly hereditary, but is also largely influenced by the range of experiences gained in the context of personal identity development. Where Beijaard (2009) and Ruijters (2015) state that the personal dimension is constructed by the combination of a set of specific personal, sociodemographic characteristics with the professional's personal biography and learning history, other scholars have emphasized different components and describe the personal dimension as composed of the personal, sociodemographic characteristics and the reflected set of values, beliefs and associated standards that originate from the professional's background (Fatoki, 2014; Lucieer, 2020; Matthys & Thijssen, 2013). In research on teaching, scholars who emphasize the personal dimension are particularly interested in how past personal life experiences interact with teachers’ professional lives (Beijaard et al., 2000). Not every author uses the term personal dimension: some use the terminology ‘personal interpretation framework’ (Kelchtermans, 2009), while others frame the personal dimension in terms of Self Theory (Finn et al., 2010). Nevertheless, all these descriptions fit under what we understand as the ‘personal dimension’. Although a large portion of the literature we refer to here comes from education research, the theory formation on personal dimension in this literature cannot simply be extrapolated to the allied health domain – although it must be pointed out that the professionalization processes of teachers, teacher educators, and AHPs are similar. As a summary of the insights in the personal dimension outlined above, we will be using the following definition in this scoping review:

The personal dimension of the professional identity is composed of the set of specific personal, sociodemographic characteristics, the individual biography, personality-related subjects, and beliefs of the professional about profession-related subjects.

In this study, we aim to improve the understanding of the role played by the personal dimension by considering the following research question: What is known about the personal dimension of professional identity of AHPs in the (allied) health literature?

The articles included in the scoping review were published over a period of 21 years (see Table 2 in Appendix). Not one of the articles studies the personal dimension in its entirety, and only one or a few aspects of the personal dimension are studied per article. The articles were published in 42 journals, which can be divided into multi-professional studies and uni-professional studies. Multi-professional studies that investigated the personal dimension were studies on interprofessional education (Clark, 2014; Conroy, 2019; Hertweck et al., 2012; Hind et al., 2003) and interprofessional care (Davis, 2006; Jakobsen et al., 2011; Kraft et al., 2014). Physiotherapy and occupational therapy are studied in a large number of these multi-professional studies. This can be explained by the fact that physiotherapists and occupational therapists often participate in interprofessional studies.

Occupational therapy is the profession with the most personal dimension-related studies; half of the studies are related to occupational therapy (see Table 1). This can be partly explained by the ongoing search for ‘the’ professional identity of occupational therapists, and the implications that a weak sense of professional identity has been the case for these professionals, which is a frequently recurring theme in occupational therapy literature (Ashby et al., 2016; Burley et al., 2018; Clouston & Whitcombe, 2008; Devery et al., 2018; Furness et al., 2019; Goh et al., 2019).

Furthermore, occupational therapy is holistic and more socially oriented (Burley et al., 2018; Drolet & Désormeaux-Moreau, 2016), whereas other allied health professions are more biomedically oriented and influenced by the medical model (Clouston & Whitcombe, 2008; Nicholls & Gibson, 2010; Whitcombe, 2013). This biomedical and biomechanical orientation can give rise to tensions for dieticians and physical therapists who are required to become more client-centered (McMahon et al., 2016; Nicholls & Gibson, 2010). In dietetics and dental hygiene research, some attention is given to the personal dimension, while in remedial therapy, orthoptics, optometry, and skin therapy the personal dimension is barely studied. This small quantity of personal dimension-related studies in some professions can be explained through a variety of reasons, ranging from organizational to occupational content factors. Remedial therapy and skin therapy are not practiced worldwide. Orthoptics is practiced worldwide but is a small profession. Optometry is practiced worldwide (WCO, World Council of Optometry, 2015), but in the optometric world barely any attention seems to be given to this subject. Optometry is an instrumentally and biomedically oriented profession (Long & Rosen, 2017), a profession taught through ’the official regulations and guidelines regarding optometry standards of practice‘ (Spafford et al., 2004, p. 802). In conclusion, the findings for allied health professions reveal a substantial growth in attention given to subjects related to the personal dimension. In uni-professional research, the degree of attention given to these subjects varies, ranging from barely any studies in optometry and orthoptics; some uni-professional studies in speech therapy, dental hygiene, and dietetics; and a large quantity of studies in occupational therapy, with physiotherapy ending up in the middle range.

In the allied health professions studied in this scoping review, a variety of scientific approaches are employed, as illustrated in Table 1. In the articles studied for the review, the personal dimension figured mainly as a topic for a subsection. Most studies were qualitative studies, only 11 studies were quantitative studies. 25 out of 81 studies were multi-professional studies. Half of the quantitative survey studies are multi-professional studies (Cooper, Spencer-Dawe & McLean, 2005; Gendron et al., 2016; Hertweck et al., 2012; Hind et al., 2003; Jakobsen et al., 2011; Stull & Blue, 2016). In our review, many qualitative studies mentioned study limitations, such as small numbers of participants or regionally executed studies. Some studies (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016; Guajardo et al., 2015; Helmich & de Carvalho-Filho, 2018; Khalili et al., 2014) specifically combine the findings and views of different authors and study them from a polyvocal and cross-cultural perspective.

Concluding the numerical side of the review, we can observe a large variation in the attention given to components of the personal dimension within a variety of allied health professions. The reviewed studies vary in sample size and research methods. Only seven out of 81 studies were review studies, which underlines the need for our scoping review.

Viewed from diverse allied health discourses and cultures, the personal dimension appears to reveal itself as a multi-layered and multi-discoursal concept. Many components of the personal dimension can be unraveled from the multi-discoursal terms used to name single components. In order to do justice in our model to the fact that these components are not strictly demarcated, we introduce here the concept of four interrelated aspects of the personal dimension. The first aspect encompasses specific characteristics of the professional dimension and forms the foundation of the personal dimension. The second and third aspects consist of life experiences and specific character traits. Finally, the fourth aspect, the worldview of the professional, is formed by the interaction of the first three aspects (Figure 2).

Figure 2

The professional's sociodemographic characteristics are factual properties of a single aspect within the personal dimension. These include characteristics like age, gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Each characteristic fulfills its own role in the personal dimension.

Information on the characteristic of age is frequently recorded, but not otherwise used as data in the studies included in our review. Given that age and time spent in the profession (seniority) are connected, and both are highly personal, some of the studies reviewed can be examined through the lens of the personal dimension. In their study about teaming, Gendron et al. (2016) state that age paired with time spent in the profession (seniority) is significantly associated with professional identity, and that teamwork adds both personal and professional value to occupational activity. Unfortunately, they do not further elaborate on their statement that the personal, sociodemographic characteristics of age and professional experience are correlated with professional identity. Black et al. (2010) and Holland et al. (2013) do offer an explanation for this correlation. They state that age is related to professional seniority, and that being older is often associated with having increased professional experience, an asset that strengthens a professional's confidence. Moreover, being older is associated with experiencing other themes in ethical dilemmas (Kenny et al., 2009). Unfortunately, the studies reviewed that include experience as a factor do not take the characteristic of age into account, while in the research sample composed of students there is sometimes a large age difference (Atkins & Gingras, 2009). On the other hand, the professional identity of students and experienced professionals, and how both groups perceive their professional role, is frequently a topic of comparison in studies (Champine et al., 2018). This leads to the conclusion that researchers are not in a position to identify which part of the results are related to professional experience, and which part may also be related to age and corresponding life experience. Based on what is stated in the studies reviewed, more senior and experienced professionals tend to have more confidence in themselves and others. Confidence is related to resilience, which is part of the third aspect of the personal dimension.

Information on the second personal characteristic, gender, is also nearly always recorded: sometimes as a statistic, sometimes to indicate the distribution in the participants or the profession. Gender is very imbalanced in allied health: in most allied health professions the majority of professionals are female (McEntee-Atalianis & Litosseliti, 2017), an overrepresentation that is also reflected in the participants of the studies reviewed. In some studies, the fact that participants were male was a criterion for their selection (Gheller & Lordly, 2015; Holland et al., 2012; Lindquist et al., 2006). The so-called ‘female monopolization’ has several effects on men in allied health. First of all, it forms a barrier keeping men from entering female-gendered professions such as speech therapy, which is called ’an extreme sex-segregated occupation (an under-researched area)’ by McEntee-Atalianis & Litosseliti, (2017, p.2). Female-dominated cultures sometimes feel unwelcoming to men. Men entering female-dominated professions experience feelings of difference, which is often seen as negative, but which can also be seen as an opportunity (McEntee-Atalianis & Litosseliti, 2017; Neiterman & Bourgeault, 2015). Furthermore, men in this position also experience professional differences due to a gendered approach to work, as men are more task-orientated and take less of a helicopter view (Gheller & Lordly, 2015). In practice, men are likely to look for male role models to support their professional identity development. In conclusion, men in female-dominated professions need to be passionate about the work field to ‘survive’ (Gheller & Lordly, 2015). Female-dominated professions face challenges in the male-dominated medical world, leading to being ‘excluded’ from professional legitimacy as a result of largely being populated by women and ‘visible minorities’, with negative effects on salary, status, and job opportunities (Khalili et al., 2014; McEntee-Atalianis & Litosseliti, 2017). Finally, a female-dominated professional population is not always a negative factor according to Hertweck et al. (2012), since women are more positive about collaboration, teamwork, and interprofessional learning. Summarizing the role gender plays in the personal dimension, it can be concluded that male AHPs entering female-dominated allied health professions do indeed encounter barriers, which can create tensions. Female AHPs encounter barriers related to professional legitimacy, salary, status, and power, a negative factor which impacts their self-image.

The third characteristic, nationality, is not often mentioned in the studies we reviewed: it is mentioned once as specification of the research team (Rees et al., 2019), and twice as a characteristic in the table of participants (in both cases French-speaking Canadians) (Drolet & Désormeaux-Moreau, 2016; Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016a). It seems that nationality is implicitly linked to other characteristics of the participants’ backgrounds. In case of the Drolet studies, nationality is linked to language. Language, as in mother tongue, is more frequently mentioned, and also linked by researchers to confidence (Holland et al., 2012). In the personal story of her professional identity development as an occupational therapist, Abreu (2006) reveals that being Puerto Rican in an American city was challenging and made her question who she was. Sometimes she felt Puerto Rican, at other times New Yorker/American, and this ambiguity affected her role as an occupational therapist, taking her time to adjust. Working in an environment in which colleagues speak a different mother tongue and have other nationalities affects one's professional self-image and decreases confidence.

The fourth characteristic, ethnicity, is mentioned in eight studies, primarily as an illustration of the target group, but the results do not list whether ethnicity is a significant factor. The reason that ethnicity is queried without further using these data may be due to an ingrained practice of researchers with a medical background, namely the standard consideration that ethnicity and diagnoses are epidemiologically intertwined (Whaley, 2003). Lawson et al. (2017) do mention in their study limitations that they would have liked more ethnic diversity in their research sample to create a better representation of their target group. It is to be expected that ethnicity influences the personal dimension, because ethnicity is connected with a specific culture, and also because of racist reactions that an ethnically ‘different’ professional or student may encounter. In their Facebook study, Ranz and Nuttman-Shwartz (2017) mention that they did encounter a tendency towards racism, but also an increased, positive awareness among students regarding their personal, professional, national, and global identities. According to Ranz and Nuttman-Shwartz, these findings are valuable because in regular academic settings students hesitate to give voice to personal, traditional, and cultural dimensions, which is precisely what is important for opening up to other worlds (Ranz & Nuttman-Shwartz, 2017). Being aware of the cultural (ethnic) background of habits and knowing how to cope with dilemmas arising from this kind of diversity is important for professionals who seek to provide appropriate responses in a practice visited by clients with a variety of cultural backgrounds (Mårtensson & Archenholtz, 2017).

To conclude, although these four characteristics – gender, age, nationality, and ethnicity – are rarely studied as main topics, they do influence the personal dimension of professionals to a greater or lesser extent. Gender, nationality, and ethnicity play a role in the background of all types of professionals, but their impact is greater for minority groups in allied health (Abreu, 2006; Gheller & Lordly, 2015; Neiterman & Bourgeault, 2015). Being part of a minority group affects the personal dimension of professionals and those professionals encounter barriers in study and work that challenge their confidence (Gheller & Lordly, 2015). It must be noted that this impact on minorities is not only relevant for the minority group itself. In multidisciplinary teams, it is important an individual professional will be able to understand that his perspective is one perspective and other professionals may look at a client, practice, or institution from a very different viewpoint (Jarvis & Trodd, 2008). Having an eye for the effect of personal characteristics can create awareness, and reduce tensions between the personal dimension on the one hand and professional beliefs that stem from the professional identity on the other (Jarvis & Trodd, 2008).

To denote the impact of professionals’ personal histories on the personal dimension, various terms are used. Hooper (2007) uses the term biography, while others speak of the effects personal life experiences and family upbringing have on the personal dimension (Atkins & Gingras, 2009; Drolet & Désormeaux-Moreau, 2016; Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016; Kenny et al., 2009; Plack, 2006). Hooper (2007) states that biography, as an overview of life experiences, has an impact on the thinking and acting of all types of professionals. We should not only consider the manner in which students’ biographies are taken into account by educators, but also the biographies of educators themselves, since educators’ biographies personify an implicit curriculum that informs their teaching (Hooper, 2007; Matthews et al., 2020; O’Shea & McGrath, 2019). In their study about the development of professional values, Drolet and Sauvageau (2016) establish that personal experiences, family upbringing, and life experiences have a substantial impact. Their study shows that what constitutes impactful personal experiences and family factors varies with age. Younger professionals refer to childhood experiences such as practicing competitive sports, being part of a scouts group, or the influence of religious upbringing. Older professionals refer to their relationship and parenting experiences. As stated by one of the participants in the Drolet and Sauvageau study: ’Certainly, on a personal level, we grow from our life experiences, we react to them, we reflect upon on them, and that is what makes us who we are‘ (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016 p. 291). Black et al. (2010) state that for physical therapists the first year of practice is an important transition period, because the full weight of professional responsibility weighs on novices along with the process of integration into the clinical community. This transition period from student to professional not only creates tensions but also brings growing confidence (Black et al., 2010). Personal life experiences such as having a disabled parent, grandparent, or sibling, and the resulting effects on family upbringing have been found to have lifelong impact on the personal dimension (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016). A similar effect is shown by Lahav et al. (2018), who researched the effect that long-term relationships with persons with disabilities – and with their families and friends – have on occupational therapy students. Professionals with personal histories of illness do effectively connect these experiences to their work (Lawson et al., 2017). Kenny et al. (2009), in turn, point out that personal life experiences, as part of the personal dimension of speech therapists, play an important role in dealing with ethical dilemmas and challenges of the healthcare system in this profession.

All personal life experiences of being confronted with ethical doubt cause professionals to grow and to reflect on their professional values. Consequently, these personal experiences shape the professional practice of AHPs. Because of the demonstrated effects of personal dimension factors on healthcare practice and the limited research that has been done on these factors, Kenny et al. (2009) call for further investigation of the ’relationship between healthcare practitioners’ personal and professional identity‘ (Kenny et al., 2009, p. 434).

The third aspect of the personal dimension consists of personal traits. In the selected articles, many terms are used to identify traits related to the personal dimension. Some authors use categories like character traits (Kenny et al., 2009) or personality and abilities (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016). Others study specific characteristics like resilience, confidence, and virtues (Ashby et al., 2016; Holland et al., 2012; Jakobsen et al., 2011). Resilience is the capacity to deal with adversity and traumatic events (Hendriks et al., 2018). Resilience-related character traits are the most studied, due to the phenomenon that resilience combined with career longevity supports professionals in facing challenges and preventing burnout (Ashby et al., 2016; Edwards & Dirette, 2010; Scanlan & Hazelton, 2019). Character traits interfere positively and negatively in the mental health of AHPs while working in a challenging healthcare system with high workloads (Lau et al., 2016). Resilience-related personal traits and virtues can be conceptualized as two sub-aspects in the personal dimension, which we will discuss here.

The fourth aspect of the personal dimension, the worldview of the AHP, can be seen as the filter through which the professional views his or her professional practice. This filter is formed by the first three aspects of the personal dimension and consists of core beliefs (Burford et al., 2014; Hess-April et al., 2017) and core values of AHPs (Awlor, 2013; Hayward et al., 2013; Kenny et al., 2009), paired with personal norms which are, specifically, shaped by family upbringing and the AHP's socio-cultural background (Drolet & Sauvageau, 2016; O’Flynn et al., 2014; Wimpenny & Lewis, 2015).

In their study, Burford et al. (2014) see personal beliefs as part of the personal moral and ethical codes, or core beliefs, of individuals. These core beliefs are identified as underpinning the professionalism of individuals. In testing their theoretical findings with the participants of their study – students and educators of three health professions – Burford et al. observe that the participants saw professionalism as part of the identity of the professional that cannot be parceled off from the latter. In all the reviewed articles in which core beliefs are defined, core beliefs are seen as belonging to the personal dimension. The authors connect core beliefs with family upbringing and confirm that these are sometimes the underlying motivation for becoming a healthcare professional. One example of a core belief that is frequently mentioned in healthcare is consistency of approach; the belief that every patient has the same rights to good care, irrespective of origin or social status, and the right to be seen as a person, not as a patient (Burford et al., 2014).

This worldview filter, as outlined above, is formed by the first three aspects of the personal dimension. For instance, there is a relationship between the core values in the fourth aspect and the virtues in the third aspect. Two of the virtues, which are also values, that are important in the personal dimension are veracity (honesty) and integrity. Integrity is also one of the core values emphasized by the American Physical Therapy Association (Hayward et al., 2013). In addition, in the study of Kenny et al. (2009), integrity is the ethical principle at stake in ethical dilemmas of speech pathologists. These dilemmas arise from internal conflicts between personal and professional identity, conflicts primarily created on account of the professional code of ethics. Organizational and community-related dilemmas arise when professionals’ personal values are not consistent with having to work ‘cost-effective’, ‘outcome-driven’, or when they experience that fair, equal access to care is not guaranteed for all patients (Hughes, 2001; Kenny et al., 2009). These feelings of unfairness usually arise from values that are shaped by the professional's family upbringing and sociocultural background (Drolet & Désormeaux-Moreau, 2016). The cultural background of the professional, with its different norms and values, is shaped by the context of regional cultures and countries, and impacts the development of professionalism and the professional identities of students according to Helmich and De Carvalho-Filho (2018) and Lecours et al. (2021). Many curricula are built on Western thinking about professional identity, but in this globalizing world we have to add non-Western insights, or as Guajardo et al. (2015) put it, bring together the ‘“developed” global north and “developing” south’ (Guajardo et al., 2015, p. 4). This is exemplified in the research of Neiterman and Bourgeault (2015) on internationally educated healthcare professionals (IEHPs). These authors found that IEHPs who emigrated to Canada primarily had to adapt their cultural competency to the new context, by combining ‘old’ skills with new ones, and developing new communication patterns to transition to the new culture of the practices in which they were employed. The biggest challenge for IEHPs was to deal with the fact that their skillset and identity was questioned by Canadian colleagues. Canadian healthcare professionals view their Canadian identity and skill set as the norm, and emigrating IEHPs had to demonstrate that they met this norm, especially in terms of their ideas on gender and racial issues, due to stereotypes held by local professionals (Neiterman & Bourgeault, 2015). Conroy (2019) and Hind et al. (2003) argue that stereotyping about professions is a general problem in health care, which needs to receive attention in healthcare curricula as part of professional identity development and as a basic condition for interprofessional education and interprofessional healthcare (Conroy, 2019; Cooper et al., 2005; Hind et al., 2003).

These examples of the effects of worldview demonstrate that characteristics like nationality, ethnicity, and gender do influence the worldview of AHPs and, moreover, can cause moral dilemmas in allied healthcare. Life experiences, personal traits, and virtues do shape the core values and core beliefs of professionals, and the personal norms connected with these. Professionals are not always aware of their own worldview. The experience of an ambiguous situation, or talking about ethical dilemmas in peer-support groups or in response to new research findings, can create awareness of how the personal dimension interferes in clinical practice (Guendouzi & Williams, 2010). Hammond et al. (2016) argue that when professionals frequently participate in moral and ethical reasoning in peer-support groups, they develop a stronger sense of their personal dimension, which supports their individual agency.

The strengths of our scoping review are the systematic nature of our study, the quantity and range of the included articles, and the scoping review's potential contribution to future research, practice, and education.

A limitation is that the review is conducted on the basis of Dutch allied health professions, which includes some allied health professions that are not widely practiced internationally, but also omits some professions, such as nursing, which belong to allied health in other parts of the world such. It would be interesting to study the differences between the personal dimension as elaborated in the allied health professions of this scoping review and the personal dimension as elaborated in nursing.

Another limitation is that the search did not include a sociological database. Including a sociological database could have provided some relevant studies from a different perspective. Although there was a substantial overlap in the studied databases because many journals are included in both (allied) health and psychology databases.

This scoping review serves as an initiative to generate more attention for the personal dimension of professional identity.