Personal statement examples, annotated

During a week shadowing at my local GP surgery, I watched a doctor spend most of an appointment with a patient who had come in about tiredness. 1By asking one more question about home, she found the real problem: he had become his wife's full-time carer and was not sleeping. (note 1) 2I realised that medicine is as much about listening for the second problem as treating the first, (note 2) and that is the part of the job I most want to learn. Reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande pushed this further. 3His point that good care starts with what a patient values, not only what is treatable, changed how I saw the end-of-life decisions I had read about in the news. (note 3) A junior doctor who spoke at our careers evening was honest about night shifts, paperwork and difficult conversations, and hearing it made me more certain, not less. 4I want to study medicine because it joins the science I enjoy most to conversations that change what happens next for a person. (note 4)

1A-Level Biology explained what I had seen at the surgery: our topic on the stress response showed me why a carer's sleep and immunity can both suffer. (note 1) In Chemistry, a rates-of-reaction practical went wrong twice before I traced the problem to a thermometer reading. 2Repeating it until I could explain the odd result taught me patience and honesty with data, which I will need in clinical work. (note 2) My Extended Project asked whether shorter antibiotic courses work as well as longer ones for some infections. 3To answer it I learned to read a trial summary critically: checking the sample size, what the control group received and whether the outcome mattered to patients. (note 3) Writing it up over six months also taught me to plan a long piece of work and keep to deadlines that no teacher was setting. 4Maths helps me check drug-dose calculations in our school medical society, where I now lead the weekly case discussion. (note 4)

For the past year I have volunteered every Saturday at a care home. 1Early on, a resident with dementia became distressed each afternoon; the staff taught me to slow down, sit at her eye level and talk about her garden, and our visits became calmer. (note 1) 2It showed me that small, steady actions build trust, and that care is teamwork: I learned as much from the healthcare assistants as from anyone. (note 2) At the end of each shift I write a short note for the next volunteer about how each resident has been, which I now see as a small version of a clinical handover. I also completed a first aid course and a free online course on medical ethics. 3My part-time job at a supermarket has taught me to stay calm and polite with someone who is upset, when there is a queue behind them. (note 3) 4I know medicine is demanding. These experiences have shown me I can keep going when work is repetitive or emotionally hard, and still notice the person in front of me. (note 4)