Health Promot Pract. 2014 Jul 11. pii: 1524839914541279. [Epub ahead of print]

Forming and Developing Your Professional Identity: Easy as PI.

Goltz HH1, Smith ML2.

Author information

• 1University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, USA Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA Michael E. DeBakey VAMC, Houston, TX, USA goltzh@uhd.edu.
• 2The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Texas A&M Health Science Center, College Station, TX, USA.

Abstract

Health education and promotion specialists and professional organizations have worked hard to successfully establish and maintain the status of health education/promotion (HE/P) as a unique and essential profession and to solidify practitioners' sense of professional identity. A professional identity is critical to a person's sense of self: It is about connecting with roles, responsibilities, values, and ethical standards unique to a specific profession. Professional identity is a complex issue in the HE/P profession; the distinction between personal and professional identities has been debated repeatedly over the years (e.g., should HE/P professionals be role models for clients?). The purpose of this Tool is to explain the concept of professional identity; provide new, emerging, and experienced HE/P with a greater understanding of what it means to have a professional identity; present processes and benchmarks of professional identity development; and offer specific tips and strategies for developing and enhancing an HE/P professional identity.