The impostor phenomenon construct in medical education

A meta-analysis of its prevalence and a critical appraisal of its measurement

Bibliographic Data

ID22422555
AuthorsYusof Mohamed Omar (0009-0003-1857-0589), Youssef A Khattab (0009-0002-7066-4374), Ahmed Abdelmageed (0009-0002-7902-690X), Mark Messak (0009-0001-2571-3934), Youssef Mandour (0009-0006-1019-2925), Abdullah Emad Shabeeb (0009-0000-7293-8231), Abdulrahman M Zakaria (0009-0007-9003-8916), Moaz Elsayed Abouelmagd (0000-0002-0511-2429)
Year2026
Publication date2026-03-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAdvances in Health Sciences Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1382-4996 • E-ISSN: 1573-1677
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10459-026-10513-3
LanguageEN
References cited72

Impostor phenomenon (IP) is widely cited as a significant challenge in medical education, yet its conceptual and methodological foundations are unstable, hindering a clear understanding of its true scope and impact. Thus, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to first establish a pooled prevalence of IP among medical students, and second, to critically appraise the measurement tools and definitions used in the literature. We systematically searched PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and CINAHL through July 2025 for all studies quantitatively assessing IP prevalence in medical students. Using a random-effects model, we analyzed data from 34 studies, including 9,550 participants. The overall pooled prevalence of IP was 49% (95% CI [0.43–0.54]), but this figure is complicated by extreme heterogeneity across studies (I 2 =95.6%, P P = 0.021), geographic region ( P P

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