From clinic to campus: Changes in professional identity of allied health professionals who became academics – a scoping review protocol.

Objective: To analyse and present the evidence regarding the professional identity transformation of allied health professionals who became academics at universities. Introduction: Allied health professionals who become academics face considerable challenges in adapting to their new roles and professional identity transformation. Research on this topic is gaining momentum, especially in nursing and medical disciplines. Knowledge gaps remain around the experience of allied health professionals who become university academics worldwide. Inclusion criteria: Using the PCC framework, the “population” of this review include allied health professionals; the “concept” is professional identity and “context” is tertiary education or universities worldwide. Publications related to medicine, nursing and other related disciplines, students or professional identity changes during other career transitions, will be excluded. Methods: English peer reviewed articles, full text conference papers and theses will be included. The following databases will be searched: CINAHL, Emcare, SocIndex, Medline, Education research complete, ERIC, Open Dissertations and ProQuest Theses. Citations will be uploaded to Covidence. Two reviewers will perform all stages of the review within Covidence. Search results, the study inclusion process as well as reasons for exclusion will be reported and presented in a PRISMA flow diagram. Extracted data will include details about the population, concept, context, study methods and relevant findings. The evidence will directly address the review objective and questions. Data will be presented in a graphic or table form, accompanied by a narrative summary that will describe how the results relate to the review objective and questions.