The Influence of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Professional Identities of Health Care Workers

Shushentha Naidoo and Shaun Denvor Ruggunan

SAGE Open, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, 21582440241311696

Abstract: The professional identity of health care workers is in constant reconstruction. Since identity is fluid, it is easily influenced and the Covid-19 pandemic created change which affected the professional identity of health care workers. Based on structuration and positioning theories, the purpose of this paper is to answer the question: how has the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the professional identity of health care workers? The methodology applied was qualitative. Six individuals participated in 60-min semi-structured interviews. Three themes emerged from this study. These themes are; professional strain and identity management, crisis and reconstruction and experiences of Covid-19. The study found that through the challenges of Covid-19, the professional identity of health care workers was strained. To support the professional identities of health care workers, it is recommended that policies on creating and promoting identities need to be guided.

Keywords: professional identity; pandemic; health care profession; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440241311696 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:1:p:21582440241311696

DOI: 10.1177/21582440241311696

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().