I have always looked forward to the day I would apply for a residency in Internal Medicine. My experiences from even before I got admitted to Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria to date have shaped the specialist I aim to be and I am confident my background has prepared me to succeed in this pursuit. I grew up in the south-eastern part of Nigeria where both the nuclear and extended family is close-knit. The gentle but professional way my uncle, a family physician took care of any ill member of our family resonated early in my life and I wanted to be a doctor like him. I always looked forward to going to his small practice during which I would ask him as many questions as my young mind could muster about medicine. After I gained admission into medical school, the journey from the pre-clinical years of understanding how the human body functions to the clinical years of seeing how that fund of knowledge transformed a sick person’s life caused me to gain a deep respect for the profession. I enjoyed all my rotations and learned so much from them. However, my first day in the medical ward remains indelible in my mind. The empathic way my …show more content…
I could not believe the still body before me was the vibrant, seemingly healthy woman I had seen days before. As I mourned her, my resolve to specialize in Internal Medicine was set in stone. The second event was watching a neonate twitch to death from Neonatal tetanus. I reasoned this death would have been avoided with just one shot of tetanus toxoid during the Antenatal visits. These two incidents convinced me that most avoidable deaths could have been either prevented with good Public Health practices or treated with the right clinical skills and resources. Therefore, I set for myself the goals of having expertise in Internal Medicine and Public
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Show MoreA career in medicine has been a childhood dream for me. I was born and raised in a small and underdeveloped city in Sri Lanka, where hospitals and doctors were sparse. At the age of ten, I lost my father due to a lack of immediate medical care. Shortly thereafter, a civil war erupted and I witnessed countless deaths throughout my childhood. At a young age, I understood that many deaths could have been avoided, if the sick and injured had access to medical professionals. These experiences have fueled my passionate desire to live my life as a physician.
As an UConn graduate, I strive to practice UConn School of Nursing PRAXIS – professionalism, respect, accountability, excellence, integrity and service. Two weeks following the orientation on postpartum unit, I knew taking care of four mother-baby couplets overnight was not going to be an easy job at a level I trauma center, where we care for the sickest of the sick. After a thorough plan of care for each patient and tailoring it to their needs for the night, I felt more confident in my skills and time management. It wasn’t until I got a call from a 14 hour post-op c-section patient at 0455 complaining of dizziness, lightheaded, blurry vision and “feeling hot”, who an hour ago was walking to the bathroom, breastfeeding baby and eating with no complains of pain. I left my workstation behind to discover a pale, diaphoretic patient with low blood pressure. I froze. Screamed for resident down the hall. Rapid response team and more professionals were there in no time while I stood by my patient holding her hand, echoing the story to residents and attending MD I’ve told previously. After twenty minutes of stabilizing the patient and diagnosing at bedside with ultrasound and abdominal x-ray, the patient suffered internal hemorrhage from tubal ligation site. She was rushed to operating room. Speaking to her husband was even harder. I froze again. I sat on my knee, held his hand and cried with him. In
During my experiences working in the medical field, I quickly learned that medicine is not just about the intricacies of the body or prescribing medications to fix the body’s shortcomings. There are many more challenges and difficulties that are involved in healthcare that involve many interpersonal skills. This summer I have volunteered with the medical director at Glenaire Retirement Community in Cary, North Carolina. After a few weeks of shadowing, the medical director asked me to see a patient to discuss her primary complaints before he joined me. I went into the patient’s room, introduced myself, and waited for a response. After multiple attempts and no recognition from the patient, the physician came in to join us.
We are taught in medical school how to care for individuals. These are important lessons we should not forget. However, I came now to understand that there are many examples where both the problem and solution lie outside the physician’s office; it was very frustrating that I was not able to conduct the medical care I learnt and I was aspiring to do. smoking; obesity; heart disease; consanguineous marriages; war; refugees; poverty and violence.
The motivation to pursue Medicine as a career is frequently presented as a few typical clichés. Some say “I’ve always known that Medicine was the career for me.” While others tout “I was often sick as a child” thus “the hospital was an integral part of my life” while others use the typical “Dr. _______ changed my life and I always wanted to be just like him/ her”. While some these things ring true of my own life experience, there were numerous, sometimes unrelated factors, that have influenced my decision and fueled my desire to pursue Medicine. However, I am particularly drawn to Internal Medicine because of its complex problem solving opportunities, emphasis on team centered care, and the never-ending learning opportunities it affords.
The motivation to pursue Medicine as a career have been frequently presented as a few typical clichés. Some say “I’ve always known that Medicine was the career for me.” Others say “I was often sick as a child” thus “the hospital was an integral part of my life” while others use the typical “Dr. ________ changed my life and I always wanted to be just like him/ her”. While some these things ring true of my own life experience, there were numerous, sometimes unrelated things, that have influenced my decision and fueled my desire to pursue Medicine. I am particularly drawn to Internal Medicine because of its complex problem solving opportunities, emphasis on team centered adult care, and the never-ending learning opportunities it affords.
Physicians in today’s world are so much more than what some people encompass a doctor to be. Physicians not only help treat ill people they also help keep people, as well as families, informed on certain factors that could impact their lives. Physicians do more than just save lives, they extend it, they help benefit it, they put time into helping researchers find out how to create vaccines for some illnesses (Russell, 2016). I want to become a physician because in my world I have seen many people affected by the results of rising healthcare. I want to be able to say that I have tried my best and help as many people as possible even if they cannot always afford it.
Medicine appeals to me as a humanistic, challenging field that offers an opportunity to help people in the most vital aspect of their lives; their health. Medicine has passionately appealed to me from my early childhood. I come from a family of doctors. My father, who is my role model, taught me two important aspects in the field of medicine: To reduce suffering & do no harm to patients. With this strong foundation, as my basis and support, entrance into a rural medical school was out of fascination for the intricate human architecture and its functioning. Being constantly in touch with the field of medicine through my father and other fellow doctors and through 6 years of medical school and rotations, I realized that Internal Medicine has evolved as mother of all branches. That is what sparked my interest in pursing a career in Internal Medicine.
Furthermore, as I wanted to advance in my career, my family and I came to the United States for a better future. Though I had several obstacles such as language barriers and financial problems, I got accepted to Florida International University with the FIU Academic Achievement scholarship and joined Alpha Epsilon Iota Academic Honor Society, where I gained experience that strengthened my desire to study medicine. Feeling so grateful for the opportunity given to me, I begun to volunteer at Miami Children’s Hospital in the Pediatric Oncology Unit. Working w...
Oddly enough, my relationship with medicine began at an early age, as a twelve year old asthmatic, living in a house with two dogs (that I insisted on having). As a result, whenever I got sick, my respiratory situation was quick to decline, which inevitably led to frequent trips to the local emergency room. In one particular situation, I was admitted to the ICU with a pnuemothorax. While I do not recall the names of the doctors or nurses who cared for me over the next several days, I have come to recognize that their anonymous efforts may very well have saved my life. Naturally, this is not something immediately recognized as a child, but there is no doubt that I was walking a thin line between life and death.
Doctors should possess the skills necessary to assess what the patient actually needs contrary to what he/she believes they require. An illness obviously impacts one’s life regardless of how minuscule. A doctor plays a vital role in both the physical condition and the, often over-looked, emotional well-being of his/her patients. I firmly believe that through my experiences in two separate, but fairly similar branches of medicine I have developed the ability to care for those in a compassionate yet professional manner along with the ability comprehend the information necessary that being a health care provider
As physicians, we are foundations for our patients. We become sources of strength and emotional security for them, in trying times. We do more than fix others back to health (spotting signs of illness, giving diagnoses, drugs or treatment). We must understand the concerns of those we help and be there for our patients—through pain and sorrow. ================
Could you have imagined that a small town boy from rural Louisiana would grow up and see the world in the name of medicine? Seeing the world beyond my small town was all I thought of as a child. Pursuing family medicine physician originated from personal experiences first as a patient then to provider in the typical rural south. As a medical student, I completed my third and fourth year clinical rotations in rural and medically underserved settings in rural areas in Poland and Louisiana. Since then, I’ve discovered that primary care is so basic if the individual is healthy – yet crucial when diagnosis methods are used to treat complex medical concerns. Of all the disciplines of medicines I choose family medicine because it is the frontline
I shadowed a primary care physician (PCP), a cardiologist, and a General surgeon in Little Rock. I was introduced to triaging, monitoring patient diets, and transitioning from diagnosis to treatment. These experiences exposed me to some of the immense responsibilities of doctors. Through my experience shadowing Dr. Richard Jackson, I learned the necessity of compassion in a physician and that it is as important as medical procedures. I observed him putting a colostomy bag on a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with colon cancer. When she recovered from surgery, he noticed she was sad and scared about the colostomy bag. He comforted her by telling stories of many other children who also had colostomy bags at a young age and finished his conversation by making funny faces at her. This made her happy and her smile expressed joy and the beauty of being alive. It taught me that a patient’s emotional health is as important as their physical health, and both factors need to be considered when providing care. This shadowing experience enabled me to see what it is like to be as a practicing physician and further reinforced my desire to be a
The phrase, “treat others as you would want to be treated” has maintained a constant presence throughout my life. This is my mother’s golden rule and, in my opinion, no other sentence is more vital to social interactions. Likewise, I cannot think of a better reason to pursue medicine than caring for others with the same passion one cares for themselves, or their family. In fact, motivation for attending medical school originally resulted from my family and an early appreciation of preventative medicine.