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. 2025 Aug;37(4):e70122.
doi: 10.1111/1742-6723.70122.

Serendipity, Flexibility, Calling and Commitment: How Clinicians Navigate the Path to Clinician-Coach

Andrew Rixon  1   2 , Victoria Lister  1   2 , Lee Yung Wong  3 , Elizabeth Elder  2   4   5 , Samuel Wilson  6
Affiliations

Serendipity, Flexibility, Calling and Commitment: How Clinicians Navigate the Path to Clinician-Coach

Andrew Rixon et al. Emerg Med Australas. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Objective: To explore the practice-related changes that occur as emergency physicians contemplate and navigate the path from clinician to clinician-coach.

Methods: Participants were interviewed about how they made sense of their coaching roles and coaching practice within the emergency department.

Results: A combination of inductive and deductive qualitative analytic approaches explored the initiation and evolution of the coaching practices of emergency medicine (EM) physicians as they navigated the path from clinician to clinician-coach. Enablers of and barriers to the initiation and development of coaching practices were identified, along with four overarching experiential qualities-serendipity, calling, flexibility, and commitment-that attend and support the process of becoming and being a clinician.

Conclusions: The stages of practice evolution and the notions of serendipity, calling, flexibility, and commitment offer a framework for understanding how EM physicians successfully embark on and navigate the path from clinician to clinician-coach.

Keywords: clinician‐coach; coaching; leadership.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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