Addressing "Why medicine" with "because its not this other thing"

[907914]

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So, part of my work activities section involves a section about non-clinical work in a reference medical laboratory. In describing what I did I also tie it back in to medicine with something along the lines of "I realized the medical laboratory is not for me because I understand the information I produce, but I am just a producer of information. As a physician I hope to not only understand the information, but contextualize it in and apply it to the whole clinical picture..."

Basically, can I address it in the fashion of 'this has steered me towards medicine by showing me what I don't want to do'? Is that fine?

Edit: I don't talk about this in my PS or any of my 'most meaningful' sections. It is hinted at a little bit, but the only place I directly talk about it is in the W/A description.

 

[lalalallala]

I definitely discuss in interviews how working in a genetics lab taught me that I really want to be a clinician and not a bench researcher, so I agree with you that it can be valuable to show them the full picture of how you got there. Are you planning to make this lab activity one of your most valuable experiences? If not, then you won't have a long word limit. I would briefly describe what you did and then say something about how while it was a valuable experience it helped you realize that you really want to be ___. I think your sentence:I realized the medical laboratory is not for me because I understand the information I produce, but I am just a producer of information. As a physician I hope to not only understand the information, but contextualize it in and apply it to the whole clinical picture... is a little too vague. In other words I don't think that sentence makes too much sense to someone quickly scanning your activities and I think it's too much for the activities section. Even just saying: I learned __ in the lab, but I look forward to focusing on clinical settings in the future so I can apply that knowledge."

 

[HomeSkool]

Basically, can I address it in the fashion of 'this has steered me towards medicine by showing me what I don't want to do'? Is that fine?

Not on its own. You might compare your clinical and nonclinical work and then discuss how direct patient care resonated with you in a way nonclinical activities didn't. Focus on what medicine is, not on what it isn't.

Think of it this way: every girl I ever dated before my wife had at least one deal-breaking quality (or thought I did) (or both), which helped me learn what I didn't want in a spouse. But if I had approached my wife with "Baby, I love you cuz you don't suck," she'd have said, "Ummm, thanks...I guess..." I got a lot farther by telling her how awesome she is instead of how awful she's not.

 

[capriccio]

I think it would be better to talk about how your medical laboratory experience offers a different perspective on medicine and how it might enrich your approach (eg. understanding how information is produced can be very valuable when trying to interpret and use that info!), rather than focusing on how you don't want to do it in the future. The first is more positive and casts your activity as constructive to your path to medicine without implying any dislike towards it, the second is bit more negative.

 

[907914]

To add to @HomeSkool
1) you can do A because you have experiences and want to do A
2) You can do A because you dont want to to do B.

#1 is 100 times more powerful than #2

Oh yeah most certainly. And through the rest of my application I focus on what medicine is and why I like the idea of medicine. This is just a full-time job that I held for two years while I was going to school so I feel like it might be worth mentioning. And the way I talk about it is in a stronger way than I had in my example. It’s more along the lines of as a Labtech I have all of this information that I don’t use and I just put out results were as a physician would take all of this information and contextualize it within the clinical picture of the patient. I am not going to be using this as one of my most meaningful segments I just wanted to know if it was appropriate to describe the activity in that way. Because it really was just for me a full-time job working on a chemistry analyzer doing nothing but putting up results. I explain how I love the scientific principles behind how the analyzer works and what the results mean but go on to say that I don’t want to produce results I want to review results etc.

 

[907914]

I think it would be better to talk about how your medical laboratory experience offers a different perspective on medicine and how it might enrich your approach (eg. understanding how information is produced can be very valuable when trying to interpret and use that info!), rather than focusing on how you don't want to do it in the future. The first is more positive and casts your activity as constructive to your path to medicine without implying any dislike towards it, the second is bit more negative.

Excellent feedback thank you. I do talk about this aspect when I worked at a rural hospital and doing this job for the military. Focusing on how something like I gained a greater appreciation for the vast amount of efforts needed to provide all of the information needed for greater clinical picture of the patient. That’s a poor description of how I put it but it something along those lines. It kind of helps I guess that I’ve done the same job in four different activities so I can kind of express three different perspectives. The military side, the reference laboratory side, the rural hospital side And the lab manager side.

This is one of the biggest reasons why I was wanting to put in a section of why I don’t want to do this anymore. Because I have so much experience working in a medical laboratory I highly anticipate getting interview questions along the lines of why change to medicine as opposed to staying in this position. So I was hoping to address that in my application as opposed to interview. Does that make sense?

 

[lalalallala]

Edit: I see it's not one of your most meaningful

Oh yeah most certainly. And through the rest of my application I focus on what medicine is and why I like the idea of medicine. This is just a full-time job that I held for two years while I was going to school so I feel like it might be worth mentioning. And the way I talk about it is in a stronger way than I had in my example. It’s more along the lines of as a Labtech I have all of this information that I don’t use and I just put out results were as a physician would take all of this information and contextualize it within the clinical picture of the patient. I am not going to be using this as one of my most meaningful segments I just wanted to know if it was appropriate to describe the activity in that way. Because it really was just for me a full-time job working on a chemistry analyzer doing nothing but putting up results. I explain how I love the scientific principles behind how the analyzer works and what the results mean but go on to say that I don’t want to produce results I want to review results etc.

You should be sure to say it in a positive light. Not about what a lab tech job lacks or how all that knowledge is going to waste. But you can still your experience to show what you learned

 

[907914]

Edit: I see it's not one of your most meaningful

You should be sure to say it in a positive light. Not about what a lab tech job lacks or how all that knowledge is going to waste. But you can still your experience to show what you learned

How would you go about wording it?

 

[lalalallala]

How would you go about wearing it?

How you want to use what you learned (say what you learned) in the lab in patient oriented settings bc you realized it wasn’t only the information that you were excited about but applying it to help solve complex problems or something like that

 

[capriccio]

Excellent feedback thank you. I do talk about this aspect when I worked at a rural hospital and doing this job for the military. Focusing on how something like I gained a greater appreciation for the vast amount of efforts needed to provide all of the information needed for greater clinical picture of the patient. That’s a poor description of how I put it but it something along those lines. It kind of helps I guess that I’ve done the same job in four different activities so I can kind of express three different perspectives. The military side, the reference laboratory side, the rural hospital side And the lab manager side.

This is one of the biggest reasons why I was wanting to put in a section of why I don’t want to do this anymore. Because I have so much experience working in a medical laboratory I highly anticipate getting interview questions along the lines of why change to medicine as opposed to staying in this position. So I was hoping to address that in my application as opposed to interview. Does that make sense?

I feel like it's better to not explicitly state in writing that you don't want to do it anymore. Maybe say it like you found it valuable to learn how to produce information, in throughout the experience you also became even more curious/excited about how that information is used and applied to improve patient health etc.

For something so significant, they'll probably ask you about it in interviews whether you state it or not in your primary, so I wouldn't really try to focus on mitigating questions when writing your primary.

 

[Lucca]

Instead of talking about something other than medicine in the negative, reflect on why those specific negatives illuminated the positive reasons you want to do medicine and then write about those.

I wrote a bunch of stuff that didn't end up in the final draft. Most of it is just my process of brainstorming and reflecting, making sense of things as I'm writing. So don't feel married to any particular angle just because it's on paper but always be thinking about how each iteration might lead to a better one until you're satisfied.

 

[907914]

Instead of talking about something other than medicine in the negative, reflect on why those specific negatives illuminated the positive reasons you want to do medicine and then write about those.

I wrote a bunch of stuff that didn't end up in the final draft. Most of it is just my process of brainstorming and reflecting, making sense of things as I'm writing. So don't feel married to any particular angle just because it's on paper but always be thinking about how each iteration might lead to a better one until you're satisfied.

Thank you for the feedback.

So, it sounds like making this change:
Original:
"While I loved the scientific principles of how the analyzer operated and knowing the clinical correlations that the lab values represent, I was left unfulfilled knowing I was just a producer of information. Through medicine, I seek to not only understand the clinical relevance of the information the lab produces, but also to contextualize this information in the entire clinical picture of the patient and to act on that information through diagnosis and treatment."

Change:
" I love the scientific principles of how the analyzer operates and knowing the clinical correlations that the lab values represent. In the lab I have learned the effort required by the diagnostic team in producing information, and through medicine, I seek to not only understand the clinical relevance of the information the lab produces, but also to contextualize this information in the entire clinical picture of the patient and to act on that information through diagnosis and treatment."

Might be the right direction? Like you said, not married to the wording, but it highlights the negatives while addressing why I want to move beyond it?

 

[Lucca]

Thank you for the feedback.

So, it sounds like making this change:
Original:
"While I loved the scientific principles of how the analyzer operated and knowing the clinical correlations that the lab values represent, I was left unfulfilled knowing I was just a producer of information. Through medicine, I seek to not only understand the clinical relevance of the information the lab produces, but also to contextualize this information in the entire clinical picture of the patient and to act on that information through diagnosis and treatment."

Change:
" I love the scientific principles of how the analyzer operates and knowing the clinical correlations that the lab values represent. In the lab I have learned the effort required by the diagnostic team in producing information, and through medicine, I seek to not only understand the clinical relevance of the information the lab produces, but also to contextualize this information in the entire clinical picture of the patient and to act on that information through diagnosis and treatment."

Might be the right direction? Like you said, not married to the wording, but it highlights the negatives while addressing why I want to move beyond it?

yah I think the idea behind this change is right on the money. The second is approximating an answer as to why someone wants to go to medical school, at least one aspect of it, without ever looking away from the question at hand.