Discussing interest in Primary Care in Personal Statement?

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Hi,

Right now, I'm really interested in going into Primary Care and working with an underserved population. I volunteered for a long time in a homeless clinic and also volunteered in an urban clinic that mostly sees the urban working poor. I really liked the work I saw being done in both places and talked to the primary care docs that worked there about their jobs. I also shadowed a primary care pediatrician in that same clinic.

Working in those environments was really inspiring and pushed me to enter medicine because I want to have a bigger impact on underserved populations while still being able to care for individuals directly (ie not a public health official or something). I want to discuss some of these experiences/motivations in my PS, but I'm not sure its wise to bring up an interest in any specialty in the PS. Maybe I should save it for secondaries/interviews?

Also, apart from the personal statement, I was wondering if saying I have an interest in PC in secondaries could be either helpful or detrimental to my app overall? I know I'm too young/inexperienced to say that I *know* I want to specialize xyz but I am intending on applying to schools that having special programs/required clerkships for PC or rural med. It seems logical that if a school wants to know "why us?" I should answer because of their commitment to PC, but maybe not? I really have no idea.

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TL;DR - 1)should I mention being interested in primary care in my personal statement or not? 2) if i'm intending to apply to schools that state they are committed to PC (special programs, clerkships, mission statement etc), will it be good to say that an interest in PC is part (or a lot) of why I am choosing to apply to their school.

 

[NonTraditional3]

PC isn't a specialty as it is all-encompassing and requires you to maintain clinical prowess in many areas: ID, Cardio, Derm, GI, sleep, pulmo, immuno, etc. I'm going to discuss my interest in internal medicine for this very reason: work with all the body systems every day? Awesome. Go for it!

 

[MT Headed]

I said I was interested in Primary Care on my PS, my secondaries, and in my interviews. I only shadowed primary care doctors and i got an LOR from a primary care doctor. I applied to a lot of schools that state they are committed to primary care. I got rejected at every single one of those.

Thankfuly some more general schools were interested in me, but my interest in returning home to do primary care took a real nosedive after that experience.

 

[NickNaylor]

Depending on how it's done you can include it, but IMO that's straying from the real purpose of the PS. I think this would be more appropriate for secondaries or interviews.

(sent from my phone - please forgive typos and brevity)

 

[Captain Fantastic]

I said I was interested in Primary Care on my PS, my secondaries, and in my interviews. I only shadowed primary care doctors and i got an LOR from a primary care doctor. I applied to a lot of schools that state they are committed to primary care. I got rejected at every single one of those.

Thankfuly some more general schools were interested in me, but my interest in returning home to do primary care took a real nosedive after that experience.

Sort of off-topic, but if your interest in practicing rural/underserved medicine in your home state is swayed by what particular medical school accepts or rejects you, maybe you weren't that dedicated to that type of practice in the first place? The patients that need care in those communities have zero say in the medical school admissions process. If you really are interested in that type of practice, don't let a handful of administrators be the barrier to your going back at some point.

Of course, people change their minds all the time, and that's totally okay. When I applied to medical school I just knew I wanted to be a Med-Peds hospitalist...until my 3rd year of medical school when I realized I didn't.

 

[Captain Fantastic]

TL;DR - 1)should I mention being interested in primary care in my personal statement or not? 2) if i'm intending to apply to schools that state they are committed to PC (special programs, clerkships, mission statement etc), will it be good to say that an interest in PC is part (or a lot) of why I am choosing to apply to their school.

Sure, you can mention it. Why not, right? It's what you want to do, you've researched it, you've gained as much exposure as a pre-medical student can get to that type of practice. You can "back up" your statement with experiences and explain how those experiences led you to that conclusion. Guess how medical students ultimately pick their specialties? Yup, you got it. Experiences.

But, I wouldn't give it too much press, though. Really, dedicating yourself to one specialty and telling how you've come to that decision is what the ERAS personal statement is about, not the AMCAS personal statement. I'd focus on why you want to be a physician in general and, by using primary care examples, the reader will probably get the picture without you having to be super specific in the PS. You will, at some point and probably during an interview, be asked what you want to do. Then you can say primary care and the picture comes into sharper focus.

Another secret. Medical schools graduate physicians that specialize in everything. I don't know of a single school, even a "primary care" school, that hasn't graduated any surgeons or radiologists or dermatologists or ... in the last match cycle. Some schools have programs that give people a richer or poorer experience in these specialties, but the truth is we need a balance of physician specialists to make the system work and the schools don't actually care what you match into as much as you think they might. They just want you to match well into what ever you do so they can publicize that in the brochure. 😉

 

[MT Headed]

Sort of off-topic, but if your interest in practicing rural/underserved medicine in your home state is swayed by what particular medical school accepts or rejects you, maybe you weren't that dedicated to that type of practice in the first place?

It's really more of an abandonment of the straight path back to rural Montana medicine, and that has to do with geography. Had I been accepted to a western school with rural emphasis I would have kept my log cabin and winter gear, etc. Since I am going to be far away now for at least 4 and more likely 8 years, it wasn't really practical for me to keep all my ties and my possessions Montana based anymore.

I could certainly see myself going into rural medicine anyway, it's just that my initial plan was to return Home. Now my only home is in a really funky southern city. And considering the job offers (link) I see thrown around here for rural medicine, there are a lot of reasons for staying.