Of Pandas and the Imposter Phenomenon in Healthcare

The 2008 movie Kung Fu Panda tells the story of a young panda named Po who is obsessed with becoming a kung fu master. He works for his restaurateur father, whose specialty is a soup that contains a secret ingredient, and feels pressure to pursue the more reasonable goal of someday taking over the family business. Against all odds, he is selected to train to become the Dragon Warrior and defend the Valley of Peace from the villainous Tai Lung. Po begins rigorous training in hopes of achieving the skills necessary to be worthy to read the Dragon Scroll, which contains the secret to limitless power. As the training progresses, Po’s feelings of inadequacy persist, and he remains convinced that he will never be skilled enough to defeat Tai Lung. This belief is shared by other kung fu masters he is training with, one of whom tells him, “You don’t belong here.” At one point Po says to his trainer, “There’s no way I’m ever gonna be like you!”¹

Many trainees in health disciplines experience similar self-doubt when navigating the challenges of a rigorous clinical program. Possessing minimal practical experience, many feel like a fraud when completing clinical tasks, especially after leaving the relatively low-stakes education environment and interacting with patients in real-world clinical settings. These feelings are common among the highest performing students and trainees and often do not diminish later in their careers as they gain the experience, clinical success, and professional credentials that validate their expertise. This reality, first labelled as imposter phenomenon (IP) and commonly referred to as imposter syndrome (IS), “often overlaps with anxiety, depression, stress, and burnout.”²