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I believe it is highy unlikely that anyone would cross check your PS with your volunteer coordinator. However, you could be asked a question during the interview that might require that you come clean... in other words, if you were asked how you felt when the person with whom you had shared x later died and you comforted the family, you might feel that it would be lying to answer the question as if it were one person. Given that the risk of that sort of thing happening is rather high, I'd be very careful taking poetic license with the stories you will share in the PS.
 
In general, I find honesty to be the best policy (See Lizzy M's post above for one of the reasons). As you go through successive iterations of your PS, I would not be surprised that you find that telling the story as it actually happened is compelling and not as hard to covey as you first imagined.
 
Are you really asking permission to use someone else’s story as your own?
 
Disclaimer: maybe this is just my style.

But my opinion is if you're asking yourself this question, your personal statement is doing! too! much! without doing the right things. Many applicants hear "show, don't tell" and in turn write the best version of a pathos-riddled Grey's Anatomy episode they can from their own clinical experience. Stop right there! Showing through experience is good, but I feel like this is not said enough: your personal statement is an ARGUMENT, not a story. A story of what happened to you or what a patient said, did, or acted towards you is NOT a compelling, logical argument. Maybe it's what turned you toward the path, but even that should be way briefer then what's kept informing you until now.

Most of the words in your statement should come from the perspective of your own mind connecting your claim (I'm uniquely right for this) to multiple pieces of common thematic evidence ACROSS your different activities (I have demonstrated this desire/practice/mindset here, here, and here). NOT from passively rehashing a particular memory.

You may read this and say "STFU Xfilez! I was gonna do that already and only mention this BRIEFLY in ONE POINT of a higher order argumentative paragraph. To demonstrate ONE of the MANY reasons I realistically, logically, demonstrably fit in medicine!" OK then, great job and I commend you for nailing it! But maybe someone else will read this who needs it more and I'll be happy.
 
microbezzzz said:
Hello all,

Like many others, I am beginning the process of preparing my personal statements. I have a particular experience in mind that I hope to write about, during which I interacted with several individuals whose stories I would like to include. In order to include both sets of experiences, I am toying with the idea of taking the noteworthy learning experiences/highlights from my interactions with each individual and combining them as if they were one person. The outcome would hopefully be a more complete and compelling narrative illustrating how I exhibited physician-like qualities and grew from the experiences. The alternative would be to include both stories separately but I fear that the two truncated stories don't flow as well. I feel like this might be an ethical grey area since the combination of these two stories is not technically a factual account. Of course, I don't want to mislead anyone or get in on a lie, and I am somewhat concerned that if they crosscheck with my volunteer supervisor this person would confirm that these events did not all occur with the same individual.

I'd greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on the issue.
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Just tell the truth. That works better. It's OK to change names. Do NOT write a work of fiction, which is what you're proposing. A PS is not a Hollywood script.
 
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