How to write a medical personal statement
A comprehensive guide by a UCL medic
1. Brainstorm: What is a doctor?
It seems like a pretty obvious answer at first, but in truth, it is probably the most important question you have to ask yourself before writing any application to Medicine. If you, like me, spent your youth growing up watching shows like House, Casualty and Holby City, then it’s pretty easy to fool yourself into believing that doctors fit into this one box: the omniscient hero that goes to the ends of the world for their patients.
The truth is that’s a glorified (and somewhat untrue) image of a doctor. Having a realistic appreciation of what a doctor is can help tailor your personal statement to Medicine and demonstrate a greater awareness of the profession. It is essential that before writing your personal statement, you take the time to list what you think a doctor is and answer two simple questions:
1. Have I seen a healthcare professional act in this way?
2. Have I done something that is like this?
To help you, I’ve come up with a few aspects that I think helps reflect what a doctor is:
2. Opening Line — Everyone’s is the same
It feels like there is a lot of pressure on this one line in your statement. Everyone thinks this is the defining moment where you either demonstrate your worth or are rejected by every uni in the country. The truth is, sadly, everyone’s personal statement has a very similar opening sentence:
‘I want to do Medicine for x, y and z’
The problem is your reasons for doing Medicine are likely to be very similar to your peers but DON’T stress out. This is a very natural challenge that everyone has when writing their statement and many people find it useful to write the rest of the statement first and then go back to their opening sentence. The only advice I can give you on this section is to be honest and truly reflect on your reasons for doing Medicine.
Also, remember that simply ‘helping people’ is not sufficient. A common question students get asked during medical school interviews is:
‘You say you want to be helpful, so why not apply to be a nurse’
The truth is you can help people in nursing, law and so many other professions, so there must be something about how you help in Medicine that makes it stand out to you. It is much better to pre-empt this in your personal statement than look like every other student applying to Medicine — because in truth most people who apply do so because they want to help.
3. How to talk about reflection
When asked to write your medical personal statement a lot of people will tell you that it is important to demonstrate how you have reflected on your experiences. Reflection helps demonstrates what you have learnt from these experiences but also speaks a lot about who you are. Doctors are continuously called on to reflect and evaluate their work, so it makes sense that when applying to Medicine, universities are looking for this same characteristic.
However, from my experience of both writing and reading personal statements, a lot of students don’t actually know what reflection is and instead will choose to write sentences like this:
‘I reflected on how the multidisciplinary team worked together.’
At first glance, this sentence may appear quite strong. It talks about reflection and includes a buzz word: ‘multidisciplinary team.’
The problem is the sentence does not actually demonstrate any reflection. It doesn’t show that the student has learnt anything from their experience or gained an insight into something relevant to the field of Medicine. It is much better to be specific about scenarios that you have seen and remember to relate this to how it furthered your knowledge of one of those key aspects of being a doctor that you wrote in your planning stage (see above). Medical schools will be much more impressed with the person who demonstrates an awareness of Medicine, rather than those who use the most buzzwords.
A better example would be:
‘After shadowing the junior doctor, I began to gain an insight into how important non-verbal communication is when talking to a patient. For example….’
Furthermore, it might be really useful for you to familiarise yourself with the diagram below. Gibb’s reflective cycle is something that comes up a lot in medical practice and it might be good to begin to understand it now so you truly understand what reflection is — it is not just stating what has happened, but how it happened, how it affected you and your team and how you can learn and move on from it.
4. Talking About Work Experience
Again, the importance here is not to name drop as much technical information as you might know but rather to demonstrate what you have learnt from your time watching doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. A lot of your work experience might not seem that interesting (again, Medicine is rarely how Casualty depicts it), but, every experience when you see a doctor interact with a patient or a colleague can be worthy of discussing in your statement. Simple things such as a doctor filling out paperwork; changing the tone of their voice when speaking to a patient or even leaving the ward late because they want to take care of their patients; might at first appear inconsequential but are valuable teaching opportunities that can help you show an insight into how doctors care for their patients.
What if I haven’t got any work experience?
Work experience is a desired part of an application to Medicine, but it can also be very difficult to obtain it, especially with the current COVID 19 pandemic. Medical schools are aware of the difficulty students have in obtaining work experience and attempt to take this into account when looking at applications.
However, you should still take the time to research ways to gain work experience. I would start by contacting my local hospitals and care homes to see if I could volunteer some time shadowing or working for them. Furthermore, since the pandemic, there are a lot of opportunities online to gain work experience. For instance, the Royal College of General Practitioners has an online interactive video platform for aspiring medics to see what GP practices are like: https://www.rcgp.org.uk/training-exams/discover-general-practice/observe-gp.aspx
You can also check out the BMA’s advice for aspiring Medical students on the best ways to go about getting work experience: https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/studying-medicine/becoming-a-doctor/getting-medical-work-experience
Also, remember that work experience is not just being in a hospital or a GP. There are tonnes of opportunities to volunteer with people with disabilities (evenly remotely) and these experiences are, in some ways, even more, valuable than shadowing a doctor on a ward. These opportunities actually allow you to see, first-hand, some of the challenges health care professionals have in their workplaces and also help you to experience the rewarding nature of the work. Finally, remember the longer the better. If you can show that you have been volunteering for a long period of time (a year or more), that is great because it not only demonstrates that you have long term work experience but that you’ve clearly been thinking about helping others and contributing to your community for a long period of time.
5. What sort of things should I be writing about?
A personal statement is about you and as such it is entirely your choice what activities and experiences you wish to talk about. However, this doesn’t mean that you should just be writing anything that comes to your mind but rather that you should explain and reflect on activities that you are truly passionate about and think demonstrate qualities you believe are desirable for Medicine. Every strong personal statement will include a few common themes: volunteering, work experience (in any form) and engagement with lots of extracurricular activities. Again, when talking about these activities it is not just sufficient to say things like:
‘I’m passionate about working with children with learning disabilities’ or ‘I enjoy playing football’
But rather it should demonstrate the skills that you use during these activities which you think are transferable to Medicine, such as how football teaches you teamwork — a skill that you will find is needed in every aspect of Medicine.
Finally, please always remember that there is no point in just dropping scientific vocabulary or buzzwords if you do not demonstrate any awareness of why these are applicable to Medicine. I remember when I was writing my personal statement, I was determined to talk about some experiment I had done as part of my extended essay, just because I thought it sounded really fancy to use the words ‘ high-performance liquid chromatography.’ To this day I do not know what these words mean and am thankful that I removed this sentence for two reasons:
1. You will be asked about your personal statement if you are lucky enough to get an interview for Medicine, so you need to know the content of it well.
2. It gave me the opportunity to write something much more relevant to Medicine and demonstrate my skills — Always remember 4000 characters is not a lot so don’t waste space!
6. Positioning is Key
Be realistic about how long medical schools take to read your personal statement. It may be annoying but medical schools receive thousands of applications per year and simply do not have the time and resources to read every statement with a fine-tooth comb. Therefore, if there is something you are particularly proud of, talk about them at the start of each paragraph so that they can catch the reader’s eye. You can’t guarantee that every sentence will be read carefully so if you put words like ‘Captain’ and ‘Prefect’ at the start of each paragraph you move one step closer to capturing the reader’s attention.
7. Checking it and Character Count
You’ll come to realise that writing a strong personal statement requires revising and rewriting it several times. The first draft is never the final one and because of this reason, you shouldn’t worry about the character count at first. Instead, initially, you should write as much as possible and then cut it down later. After reading the same thing over and over again you will become tired and that’s why it is also important to ask others to read your personal statement. Whether they are in the profession or not, a fresh set of eyes is always useful to help give you advice on your personal statement and make it better. Keep drafting and practising! It will be frustrating to take everyone’s comments on board but actually listening to a variety of people will help make your statement more well-rounded.
Finally, if you wish for your personal statement to be read by someone within the field and who has experience of reading and writing them, please feel free to contact us.
Good luck!
