The Medfools Emergency Medicine Sample Residency Personal Statement Library is now open!
These sample ER – Emergency Medicine personal statements are here for your viewing pleasure (fully anonymous). We’re hoping to add more in the future, including Pre-Med personal statements. If you’ve got one to add to the free library, don’t forget to contribute yours.
I was actually really nervous. It was my first day in the emergency department. I took his history – chronic constipation and fatigue – I thought to myself is this really an “emergency?” But the further we went into the story, the more nervous I became. His father and uncle had both died from colon cancer. Moving onto physical examination, my hands regretfully met a mass in his left lower quadrant and my fingers solemnly percussed a significantly enlarged liver. With both the patient and his wife smiling up at me asking if everything was ‘ok‘, I mustered a feeble smile asked them to wait while I went to present to the ER doc on call. This would not be the last time I would encounter such a situation during my ER elective. While at first I certainly felt nervous dealing with the realities and emotions of ‘first contact’ medicine, over the course of time in the ED these feelings soon gave way to a strong sense of connection with patients, one that I had not felt in other fields of medicine.
The challenge of being the first physician to meet, evaluate, and treat a patient is a big factor that drives me to want to practice emergency medicine. The opportunity to combine careful workup with efficiency, accuracy, and compassion excites me. Additionally the wide variety of roles that the emergency medicine physician plays, including healer, detective, advocate, and educator further draws me to emergency medicine. I look forward to a career caring for a variety of patients in a busy hospital’s emergency department as part of a committed and close-knit team that handles both emergent and non-emergent situations with sensitivity and efficiency. I also look forward to teaching, both during my residency, to students, and junior residents, and also in the community with an active role encouraging health promotion and illness prevention.
During medical school, I have become involved with a number of different aspects of medicine outside of the classroom and hospital. Actively involved in the American Medical Students Association (AMSA) at my school, I served as vice president for the past 2 years. The opportunity afforded me the chance to facilitate change and be a voice and an active representative for others. These are skills that I will undoubtedly use practicing emergency medicine. Furthermore, I have also had the opportunity to grow and develop as a scientist. I worked full time for one year in a genetics lab prior to starting medical school and continued clinical and genetics research during my pre-clinical years. Research complements my inquisitive nature and I hope to continue it during my residency.
Emergency medicine draws me for a number of reasons, including many of the same reasons that I was nervous that first day. To be part of the realities of acute medicine and the impact that it has on people’s lives is exciting to me. The patient in the waiting room has decided that today his or her problem is beyond what they can manage alone and big enough to seek out help. This idea humbles me and solidifies my desire to practice emergency medicine.
