Narratives of professional formation in public health: a case study

Abstract

Public health professional education and workforce capacity is emerging as an area of scholarly interest. Studies in Australia and internationally have principally been confined to normative descriptions of educational programs and workforce profiles. There has been little consideration of the actual experiences of those learning to become public health professionals and how this might shape the formation of identities and capacities.

This study investigated the subjective experiences of professionals from predominantly clinical backgrounds as they made the transition to the field of public health practice. Conducted as a real-time longitudinal qualitative case study, the research traced twenty-one self-selecting participants across a three-year work-based program offered by a state health system and its new university partner. The study sought to explore participants' understandings of their learning and professional identities as they navigated across multiple sites of practice to achieve program outcomes as multidisciplinary public health professionals destined for senior health service positions.

The principal method of inquiry was an iterative series of in-depth interviews with participants over a three-year period, which produced a set of unfolding biographical narratives of their experiences in entering and participating in the Program. With temporality built into the research method, a diachronic analysis was used to seek patterns of change and continuity within and across participants' biographies for interpreting processes of learning and professional formation. A key finding was that becoming a public health professional in this context defied a simple developmental model of professional learning and identity. Rather, it was a complex personally mediated process of engaging in liminal identities and possible selves connected to former professional careers, program affordances and perceived areas for claiming legitimacy in the field of public health. The study contributes to knowledge of career transitions in the health professions and advances knowledge on professional learning and identity formation in public health. It illuminates the ambiguity of what constitutes ‘a public health professional’ within the Australian context and explores the wider institutional landscape for forging a career path into senior public health for those from diverse professional backgrounds.