The Impostor Syndrome as an Expression of the Educational Culture in Health Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: Health sciences education takes place in settings marked by high academic demands, constant evaluation, and pronounced hierarchies, where demonstrating competence and avoiding error become central expectations. These conditions may foster persistent experiences of insecurity, even among students with good academic performance, including impostor syndrome.

Objective: To analyze impostor syndrome among health sciences students as an expression of the formative culture during professional training.

Author's Position: Traditionally, impostor syndrome has been approached from perspectives focused on individual characteristics, such as personal insecurity or low self-confidence. While these approaches have helped to make the distress visible, they are limited in explaining its recurrence across different educational contexts. Within medical education, hierarchy, high-stakes assessments, and the symbolic weight attached to error shape an environment in which doubt is often interpreted as a sign of incompetence. In this setting, students learn to silence insecurity and to sustain their professional identity through external validation and visible performance, which contributes to the persistence of impostor experiences.

Conclusions: Understanding impostor syndrome as an expression of formative culture allows the perspective to move beyond the individual and to question educational practices that reinforce excessive self-demand, external validation, and the silencing of insecurity. This view opens the possibility of rethinking professional training from a more comprehensive and contextualized perspective.