(88) Professional Identity Formation: What do first-year students anticipate?

Objective : To showcase first year (Class of 2026) students’ self-reported anticipated experiences that will promote professional identity formation (PIF) and to make future improvements to the Co-Curriculum regarding PIF.

Methods: After one semester in the program students completed a professionalism self-assessment and were asked “Over the course of your enrollment here, what experiences/opportunities do you anticipate will help you think, feel and act like a pharmacist?” Student answers were coded into six categories.

Results: The class of 2026 completed a professionalism assignment and 108 students (82%) provided informed consent for this study. In an open-ended question, students were asked what experiences/opportunities they anticipated would promote their PIF. There were 164 unique results which were coded as participation in IPPEs, APPEs, and IPE (34%), performance-based assessments (21%), participation in professional organizations (16%), didactics, labs, and vaccination certification (10%), employment, volunteering, and internship opportunities (10%) and teamwork/collaboration (9%).

Conclusions: This information allows our program to understand how first year students identify future opportunities for professional identity formation. From these data we will be able to create additional opportunities more purposefully within the didactic and experiential settings to showcase PIF to our students. This model can be implemented at other institutions as a way to adjust PIF in the curriculum.