PSYCHIATRY RESIDENCY PERSONAL STATEMENT "Career Change"

My desire to improve people’s lives as a and the prospect of restoring sight attracted me to ophthalmology, resulting in my completion of a residency and fellowship in ophthalmology in China. The Cultural Revolution of the sixties and the democratic movement of the eighties in China shaped my life and aspirations. I came to the United States after completing my postgraduate training, to follow a dream: to become an outstanding academic physician. My early focus was the pursuit of an academic medical career in ophthalmology which would allow me to advance research and to provide state-of-the-art clinical care for patients. Towards this goal, I spent three years in Physiological Optics at the University of Opthalmology. During these years, I gained a tremendous amount of research experience, which helped me to develop my critical thinking and gave me skills in medical statistics.
Later I obtained a clinical fellowship position in the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Service at the Major Medical School from 1999 to 2000 and a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Ophthalmology at Children’s Medical Center. These programs provided me with a rich and diverse clinical experience and further exposed me to vast amounts of clinical pathology, cutting-edge clinical practice and patient management.

My training in ophthalmology was very rewarding and challenging. However, I realized that most ophthalmologists today still work in private-solo practices, and I felt a bit restrained by the limited opportunities to discuss complex clinical cases and do research in the future if I become an ophthalmologist. Therefore, I started working to towards gaining a chance at a residency training that will be able to combine my interest in an academic clinical and research career.

My interest in Psychiatry has grown exponentially during my research and clinical work over the past few years. My studies in neural control of saccadic eye movement gave me insights into the neuronal processes that influence a person’s reaction to external environment. I also learned that the neuronal processes of the human brain are integrated with neuropsychopharmacology that relates to a person’s neurophysiology, cognitive-behavior, thinking, and mental situation. I found that psychiatry, just like a discipline of philosophy, seeks to explore and organize the results of the various sciences to show the many ways in which they are related. It addresses the neurological conditions, genetic conditions and environmental conditions that affect an individual. I was fascinated with the interaction of neurophysiology and neuropsychology.

My clinical training further provided me the opportunity to see a great need and interest for psychiatry. During my clinical practice, I saw over and over that many patients have not just physical problems but also suffer from the problems of stress, depression, substance use disorders and culture stress problems with the increasing of population of immigrant. These mental illnesses and stresses have become increasingly common in our daily workplace, society, community, family, and our daily lives. Today, as the increasing need of a higher level of multiple services including body, mind and behavior from our patients, psychiatry has become a one of the most rewarding careers and it required a high level of commitment. I feel that the interaction between the psychiatrist and the patient is very meaningful and interesting in a clinical base and in addition, broad research in psychiatry challenges my interest and capability.

I have learned from my experiences in this wonderful country, that there is no better place in the world to perform medical research or to have access to the best treatments for my patients. For these reasons, I intend to pursue my career in academic medicine in the United States. Completing a psychiatry residency will be a great value for my future career. My culture background and life experience will allow me to gain the trust and respect from minority patients and to provide more valuable access and service to those patients, who remains a large undeserved medical community. This has prompted me to change my specialty focus at this point in my medical career and to apply for a psychiatry residency. I believe that my experience in research and clinical work over the year as well as my tenacity and willingness to work hard and to learn will allow me to make a great contribution to your program and to my medical community in the future.