Structured around personal stories, this book provides a rigorous review of current thinking and research on the physician life cycle. It considers the trajectories and factors that influence a doctor's development over decades of a medical career.

Taking an integrated approach, the authors consider the formal stages of a physician's training including medical school, residency training and practice, and review discourses around professionalism, competency-based education, lifelong learning, expertise development, reflection, and narrative that merge into the construct of medical professional identity formation.