My Personal Statement

As a medical student applying to residency you are required to write a "personal statement". Considering we've spent the last four years writing nothing more than notes, which consist mostly in medical abbreviations, it's quite the task to become grammar-literate (not a real term btw) again. The personal statement is the one and only party of your residency application where you have a chance to express your personality. It should explain why the specialty you chose is a good fit for you, what your goals for the future are, highlight your accomplishments, and maybe even tell a story of an experience that helped define the person you are today- all within the limits of one page. A personal statement can actually be quite personal to each student. I know mine is. But even so, I've decided to share it with you all. Deciding to go into family medicine was a huge decision for me, and I hope that other med students reading this can see why I choose this field and maybe consider it for themselves one day.
Enjoy.....

A 44 year old mother of three, I was seeing her for the third time in just a week. It was supposed to be an easy visit, going over the results of her MRI, which came back with “nonspecific” findings. Only now her headache was getting worse despite the medications she was taking, and she started experiencing weight gain, extreme fatigue, dizziness, unbalanced gait, and nausea. I knew at this point that it was more than just a headache. I rechecked her blood pressure, which was still elevated. After the doctor I was working with came in and evaluated her as well, we decided it was best to admit her to the hospital for further workup.

After some additional testing, she was diagnosed with metastatic small cell carcinoma and died just two weeks later. It was only my second rotation as a third year medical student, and I certainly did not expect to experience my first patient death so soon, and on a family practice rotation no less. But then again, I didn’t expect to diagnose someone with temporal arteritis or make home visits to a woman with progressive ALS. Here I was thinking that family practice was just managing hypertension, diabetes, or hyperlipidemia and I came to realize it is so much more than that.

When I first started medical school I never would have imagined that I would be drawn towards a career in family medicine. There are so many specialties out there to choose from. I couldn’t imagine just being a family practitioner. That’s the dilemma, though, there are so many specialties. How can you chose just one? At the end of third year I found myself so intrigued by absolutely everything, with a few exceptions, that I couldn’t make up my mind. I wanted to do it all, and looking back on all the rotations I had done, it was only during family practice that I got to see the entire spectrum of medicine. It was the most satisfying experience of my third year. The connections I made and relationships that were built with my patients during that six week block were unmatched during any of my other clinical rotations.

Family Practice is one of the only fields of medicine where you get the chance to treat the “whole” patient. Every other specialty focuses on just one system or part of a patient, while in family practice you actually get to see the patient as a person, get to know their story and their background. That’s what I love so much about it: you have the incredible privilege of being allowed into another person’s life. So much of getting to do this relies on one’s ability to communicate well and build trusting relationships with your patients, an attribute I consider one of my greatest strengths.

Being a family practitioner allows you to be not just a doctor but also part of a community. Meaning, your social responsibility is not just to patient care, but also to the town or city you work in. When my family opened a restaurant seven years ago, we wanted it to be more than just a place to get breakfast. We wanted to be a part of the community. Each year I’ve organized auctions raising money for David’s House, ran “Toys for Tips” events, and collected donations for the local soup kitchen. I never did these things because I had to, but because it just felt right. I wanted to use our business to bring the people of our neighborhood together and work towards a common cause and help those who are less fortunate.

As a future physician I plan to continue to be an active participant in the community that I work in. I look forward to starting new projects, helping out at local events, and being involved in health education. Whether it’s giving guest lectures at local schools about nutrition or staying late hours to work at the flu vaccine clinic. I want to be the doctor who takes the extra minute or two at the end of a visit to counsel my patients to quit smoking so that they don’t get lung cancer in the future. I will be the physician who leads by example and practice what I preach by showing my patients how to lead a healthy lifestyle. Above all, I will be the kind of doctor I’d want taking care of my family.