Medical Should I talk about public health interest in personal statement?

[AlteredScale]

My interest in medicine began with an interest in public health. In 7th grade I participated in the event "disease detectives" in science olympiad and I pretty much decided that I wanted to be an EIS officer. I then attended the CDC museum's disease detectives camp in high school while also starting to volunteer at a hospital. I wanted to talk a little bit about public health in my personal statement because it led me to medicine, but I also understand that it's not directly related and might just seem irrelevant. Is this something worth including or should I just talk about other experiences I had that were directly related to medicine? I don't have much clinical experience outside of volunteering at a hospital so it's just difficult for me to find something to write about without having to jump to conclusions about how tutoring is related to medicine, for example. I guess I could talk about shadowing but as much as I liked it, there wasn't a specific moment that stood out to me.

That's a great segway into your interest in medicine as public health and medicine are not mutually exclusive in anyway. I would say you would need to take it a step further in differentiating and fine tuning the answer "but why a physician", most of the time this is based on accounts of shadowing a doctor, so if your volunteering in the hospital also has specific and consistent encounters with a physician then you can do it. Otherwise, I would say shadowing a physician will also help affirm that belief while using your public health experience to personalized and tailor your PS to be "your own" so to speak without veering to far off to make adcoms wonder if you want to be a epidemiologist vs a physician. It's just a fine balance at the end of the day.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

Yes, you should definitely use this experience in your personal statement if this is indeed a real reason that made you want to pursue medicine Your personal statement is YOUR story. If that really led to you wanting to pursue medicine, then use it. You do need other things in your statement though about volunteering and shadowing doctors but use the experience you had with public health to weave everything together.

 

[Goro]

Can't recommend it except if done very briefly. You would have a better essay if you actually have done something in the public health arena.