Radiology Personal Statement?

[threau-away]

My Personal Statement for applying to medical school was pretty terrible in retrospect. I have even less of a clue how to write a Personal Statement for applying to Radiology programs. Please help.

Things I'm pretty sure I shouldn't say:

• I hate rounding
• I hate doing H&Ps, and I kinda suck at them too
• I find patient/patient family interactions exhausting, and when I think about it, I find the hospital atmosphere outside of the quiet rads reading room stressful in general
• Except for my rads electives, the clinical years of med school were generally torture and made me miss the preclinical years

Things I might(???) want to say, but need to re-word so they don't come off poorly:

• I hate being expected to think on my feet and would rather approach things in a slightly slower, academic manner, i.e. with reference textbooks if necessary
• Searching an imaging study for findings is like a fun game for me. My 2 months of rads electives were like playing fun word-search or Where's Waldo searches all day every day, and I loved it
• I found myself drawn to radiology even while on other rotations; e.g. I spent much of my downtime during my emergency medicine and ICU rotations at those deparment's PACS stations searching for appendices or PE's or abcesses or whatever our r/o diagnosis was for the patient currently at hand

Things I probably want to say, but I need at least 2 solid paragraphs and these only provide me with a few sentences:

• I love all the technology in rads
• I am excited to see what new technologies are developed in the future
• I would love being a consultant to other healthcare workers. In contrast to my interactions with patients, my interactions with other healthcare workers leave me feeling energized and positive
• I am friendly, helpful, and eager to please...even when feeling stressed by the volume of work I'm facing
• Making a diagnosis using imaging is very exciting and fun for me
• I love those few, interesting/quirky cases that pop up during each day of reading images and spice up the radiologist's day

tl;dr:

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[maxxor]

When I went to my mentor with my personal statement for his first critique, he turned the sheet of paper over and said,

"By the end of these paragraphs, I want to know the following:

1. Where you come from? What was your family like? How were you raised?
2. What was your journey to Medical School?
3. What led you to Radiology? / Why Radiology?
4. Where do you see yourself in 10-15 years?"

 

[IJL]

You sound a lot like me. I know my medical school personal statement was probably terrible.

I stressed majorly over the radiology personal statement, but eventually resigned myself to the reasoning that '10% are excellent and will stand out, 80% are plain and generic, and 10% are terrible.' So I just shot for that middle 80%.

I think you have the right idea with some of your thoughts, the only thing I'd avoid is:

• I hate being expected to think on my feet and would rather approach things in a slightly slower, academic manner, i.e. with reference textbooks if necessary

^ That might just come off poorly no matter how you word it.

But your other stuff is basically a summary of my PS (and I matched at my #1 choice).

During interviews, I wasn't asked once about anything in my PS, I assume people probably stopped paying attention after the first few sentences.

 

[Puff-of-Snow Sign]

They gave us a copy of our AMCAS PS at graduation. Most people wanted to burn it or shred it immediately. I think it's pretty common to feel like you either had no idea what you were talking about or were a terrible writer when you go back an review your PS for med school.

Agree with above (IJL) regarding whether you should talk about not wanting to think on your feet. I'm only a lowly intern, but I get the feeling that rads requires a lot of thinking on your feet given the turn-around times expected in clinical rads and the sheer volume of studies to be read on any given day.

My ERAS PS was pretty much as maxxor's mentor described. There was only one interview where it even came up and it was reviewed quite favorably.

 

[Leo Aquarius]

I'd imagine it would go something like this. "I love technology and physics, but I can't stand patients. I'm too much of a techie geek to get my hands dirty in biopsies. I'd rather sit and read films all day in a dark room for really great pay. Oh, did I mention I love to make diagnoses?" Anything other than this will seem disingenuous. Thinking on your feet makes you better suited for something like emergency medicine.

 

[threau-away]

Thanks, everyone. Maxxor, I will definitely use those ideas to bulk up my PS since I only had a few sentences previously. IJL, I will leave that part out. My pre-med personal statement was both cliched and also had a bunch of other stuff that came off really badly. I'm just so worried that stuff I say will come off wrong (especially depending on the variable moods of the people reading it), so any tweaking of word choices and tone is especially appreciated.

 

[Baller MD]

...

 

[DrBowtie]

I'd imagine it would go something like this. "I love technology and physics, but I can't stand patients. I'm too much of a techie geek to get my hands dirty in biopsies. I'd rather sit and read films all day in a dark room for really great pay. Oh, did I mention I love to make diagnoses?" Anything other than this will seem disingenuous. Thinking on your feet makes you better suited for something like emergency medicine.

Considering that while on call the only thing I am doing is thinking quickly, especially when the trauma team is breathing down my neck, thinking on your feet is absolutely critical to radiology.

 

[shark2000]

Something relatively unrelated or may be related:
Not liking or not choosing to see 30 patients in clinic every day for the rest of your life and being socially introvert are two completely unrelated and separate things.

A few radiologists that I know are some of the most sociable personalities in medicine. On the other hand, I have come across more than a handful of clinicians (even family doctors) who are socially awkward.

If you don't like interaction with people, radiology is not for you. Especially in private practice you interact with people more than you think. You have to interact with referring physicians, PAs, NPs, radiology techs, hospital admins, .... on a daily basis. And because of nature of pp, these interactions need to be mature and smart. Also you interact with patients if you do biopsies, drains, bread and butter procedures, flouro, ... Something like IR is similar to any other surgical field. If you do mammo, your level of interaction is AT LEAST on par with other clinicians.

Academics is a different beast in a sense that people can find ways to get out of the routine of every field. Not rare to see an oncologist who is in academics and is running a research lab with ZERO interaction with patients. Same for radiology. Especially because of the subspecialization in academics you can turf all the interactions to other people. For example become a chest radiologist and have your colleagues do other things or become a neuroradiologist but have other faculty do angios or spine injections or LPs. Similar to a cardiologist who can find an academic job and read echos everyday without a clinic.

I feel private practice is different. Esp if you want to get a job in a competitive market, expect to have lots of interactions with different groups of people. Some may be demanding, some may be unreasonable but also you will have many highly intellectual interactions with clinicians. I personally enjoy the whole thing, though sometimes some interactions are annoying.

Anyway, my whole point is that radiology esp in pp is not sitting in a cozy room reading your scans. It is MUCH more than that with lots of other good and bad aspects (whether these are good or bad is very subjective).

 

[shark2000]

Sorry. Duplicate post.