ways that medicine has failed you in PS

[batista_123]

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so they say talk about your experiences that made you want to be a doctor.
i know it is ok to talk about how medicine has failed you, but i have a lot of ways in which medicine has failed me or my family members, but i dont know how to put these in the PS. when i write it, the way i put it seems like i am being condescending or blaming doctors.
here are some incidents in which medicine did not help
i have tinnitus. there is no cure for it. nobody knows what causes it. No, i did not ever listen to loud music, I was very protective of my ears. i havent had a quiet night in like 4 years. every time i go to bed, ring ring ring. i hate how medicine cannot fix this. i hate how the doctors that i have been to simply jerk you around to get your cash and not provide an answer.

My grandmother has alzheimers and nobody knows how to fix this. her alzheimers is progressing rapidly, she is starting to get violent, she is becoming like an animal. and i am concerned about her safety.
due to having to take care of her, my grandfather has aged by 20 years. he was alright one day and the next day, he had parkinsons, shaking hands, falling on the street...nobody knows how to fix this, doctors simply say get a walker.

I dont know if i should include any of these. again, when i include them, it seems like i am blaming doctors. i am not, i am just saying medicine has flaws and i want to help make it better. but every time i write this, it seems like i am saying i want to discover the cure to alzheimers. it makes me look like an idiot.

comments?

 

[Artimacia]

I don't know, that seems pretty touchy. I'd probably not include it

 

[Lacheln]

I would be very, very careful about criticizing the establishment in your PS. I empathize with your frustration, but you don't want to run the risk of putting your readers on the defensive. Not only that, but there are two sides to every story - you say the doctors you have seen for your tinnitus took your cash and didn't provide an answer, the readers may say you were paying for their workup and their expertise - the lack of an answer is a failing of the current state of the science, not the professional. So phrase it as a desire to advance the science, leaving the individuals, and probably even the process, out of it.

 

[bobsmith]

based on your post, your aggressive tone could definitely be taken the wrong way and not received well by people who read your personal statement (remember that many admissions committee members are doctors). i think it's ok for people to point out their experiences with medicine, but i think if you're using negative experiences, you have to be very careful and take a nuanced approach so that any negative things you say aren't taken the wrong way.

but more importantly, i think the question you need to ask yourself is what exactly is the connection between these poor experiences in medicine and your desire to go into it? if you've got specific reasons, great. but when you say broad things like "medicine has flaws and i want to help make it better" it doesn't really mean much.

if you're saying something negative about the field that you're claiming that you want to go into, you better have a good reason for putting it in your personal statement.

 

[rHinO1]

I agree with the posters above. I don't think you should ever criticize anyone, not even one time in your PS. There shouldn't be any negative comments about another person in there.

If you have done research you could discuss your passion for finding solutions to very frustrating problems. Your desire to fill in gaps of our scientific understanding that will help people like those close to you.

 

[niblet]

I wouldn't say that medicine has failed you or that the existence of these untreatable diseases is a flaw with medicine. They aren't really flaws with medicine, they are flaws with biological stability that medicine tries to treat. It makes it look like you think medicine is a failure until all disease is abolished, which is pretty foolish.

You could talk about how experiencing these diseases firsthand and secondhand has inspired you to strive to alleviate them in others. That could be productive.

 

[lord_jeebus]

Leave it out. It will not help your application.

 

[batista_123]

but some people say its really effective so have bad experiences with medicine, ways in which medicine failed.
I guess i dont know what that means. what are some examples of when medicine fails someone?

 

[Hoody]

you could talk about how experiencing these diseases firsthand and secondhand has inspired you to strive to alleviate them in others. That could be productive.

+1

 

[whoknows2012]

I think most people in this thread are suggesting that if you want to talk about experiences (whether negative or positive) with regard to medicine, make sure you have a good way of explaining how they impacted you and how it strengthened your interest/passion for a career in medicine. You should not say something like "medicine has flaws and I wan't to help fix them," and instead focus on how the experiences have impacted you and your interest in becoming a physician.

 

[niblet]

but some people say its really effective so have bad experiences with medicine, ways in which medicine failed.
I guess i dont know what that means. what are some examples of when medicine fails someone?

How exactly does medicine fail? Because treatments for certain diseases aren't known / foreseeably possible?

Do fire departments fail for not being able to contain a nuclear explosion?

 

[mediterranean]

OP, I think you misunderstood when the part where negative experiences can be effective in PS. Some people use the experiences of currently untreatable diseases to incorporate them in a positive light. Say, for instance, you had a relative with autism. If you held fundraisers and volunteered in organizations that helped autistic people and the families that have to support these autistic people, then you see other people and what they experience and reassure them of any difficulties. This is only one example out of multiple disorders/diseases out there.

Medicine is not about providing prescription medication and say "Okay, I will see you next appointment" but providing care and support and compassion being gaining insight in their point of view as well. You have to think about the patient being in the best shape possible to live their own life (many medications treat the symptoms of a disease, rarely does it treat the disease itself). Medication only provides temporary comfort so that the patient cares for others as well. Look at it as a domino effect, if you will.

 

[Longshanks]

I think this poster is referring to the poorly phrased sentence in the PS section of the SDN book about how some applicants write about how "medicine failed them" and how they would correct the issue.

Personally, I wouldn't write about such a topic, nor recommend it. However, I think addressing issues in medicine may be an interesting statement topic... such as relating research your doing into a practical situation, or addressing public health disparities and how to correct those and your desire to rectify those disparities. That may a constructive way to address a negative situation in the field. One shouldn't discuss how "medicine failed" them however. The one way to spin it into a positive, is maybe like how in that commercial for Lipitor a few years ago, they had the doctor who developed it and he described losing his father to cardiovascular disease inspired him to become a cardiologist and going into research - however, none of us here are at that point where we can retrospectively describe what inspired an achievement such as that.

 

[rafflecopter]

Writing about how medicine has failed you isn't the best approach. My mother died of an incurable disease a few months ago, and one perspective would have been to "blame medicine" for not coming up with a cure.

Another way to look at it is that medicine gave her an extra few years with her kids before she died. It's all in how you look at things. In my statement I'm writing about how although the doctors couldn't do anything to help her condition, I admired their commitment to trying to save her and improving her quality of life. You can't call medicine a failure when someone dies-- people are supposed to die, its natural-- instead call it a success when someone lives from something that they should of died from when the intervention of medicine prevented that.

 

[VTBuc]

The fact that there are so many uncurable diseases out there just proves that we need more research. That's where all these treatments come from. If this is something you are passionate about I'd recommend checking out schools with heavy research interests. 👍

 

[LizzyM]

If you were a physician and an older lady came in with moderate to severe Alzheimer's dieases and her husband had Parkinson's disease with a history of falls, how would you treat them? I wouldn't expect you to know how to treat those diseases but how would you treat them? If a young student came in with a chronic, incurable annoying condition with unknown etiology (cause), how would you treat that patient? Based on your life experiences, how do you think that patients want to be treated? I could see a riff on that topic being a good one for a PS.

 

[apumic]

so they say talk about your experiences that made you want to be a doctor.
i know it is ok to talk about how medicine has failed you, but i have a lot of ways in which medicine has failed me or my family members, but i dont know how to put these in the PS. when i write it, the way i put it seems like i am being condescending or blaming doctors.
here are some incidents in which medicine did not help
i have tinnitus. there is no cure for it. nobody knows what causes it. No, i did not ever listen to loud music, I was very protective of my ears. i havent had a quiet night in like 4 years. every time i go to bed, ring ring ring. i hate how medicine cannot fix this. i hate how the doctors that i have been to simply jerk you around to get your cash and not provide an answer.

My grandmother has alzheimers and nobody knows how to fix this. her alzheimers is progressing rapidly, she is starting to get violent, she is becoming like an animal. and i am concerned about her safety.
due to having to take care of her, my grandfather has aged by 20 years. he was alright one day and the next day, he had parkinsons, shaking hands, falling on the street...nobody knows how to fix this, doctors simply say get a walker.

I dont know if i should include any of these. again, when i include them, it seems like i am blaming doctors. i am not, i am just saying medicine has flaws and i want to help make it better. but every time i write this, it seems like i am saying i want to discover the cure to alzheimers. it makes me look like an idiot.

comments?

Honestly, OP, I'd be very careful how you approach this. The way you approached it here would put someone on the defensive. I know, as a working healthcare professional reading it, it kind of gave me a negative knee-jerk reaction (largely due to the tone moreso than the frustrations you're expressing, which are completely understandable and legitimate) and you don't want to give someone that when they're reading your PS.

I like what Lizzy had to say here:

If you were a physician and an older lady came in with moderate to severe Alzheimer's dieases and her husband had Parkinson's disease with a history of falls, how would you treat them? I wouldn't expect you to know how to treat those diseases but how would you treat them? If a young student came in with a chronic, incurable annoying condition with unknown etiology (cause), how would you treat that patient? Based on your life experiences, how do you think that patients want to be treated? I could see a riff on that topic being a good one for a PS.

I agree with Lizzy that taking your experiences and working them into how they can make you a more compassionate and empathetic physician could make for a great PS. I think your experiences have a lot of value and your frustrations certainly have a legitimate place in your PS but they need to be directed in the right direction. They are like a nuclear reaction -- they have the potential to do a lot of work but, if used improperly, could end up destroying your entire application with a stroke of the pen or a flurry of keystrokes. Definitely take your frustrations, though, and use them to help you understand where pts might be coming from. Perhaps some time volunteering (or working) in a nursing home or on a rehab floor (or in-pt psych or any number of other units w/ chronic/long-term/repeat pts) might give you more ideas and/or maturity of ideas as to how to channel your personal experiences into the development of an empathetic and emotionally effective physician.

 

[boaz]

It's always a good idea to avoid negativity in the applications and interviews. But if there's a way to make the point in a positive way, then by all means I'd go for it.

 

[familyaerospace]

In the personal statement I've written so far (version 5 draft 4), I am critical of several parts of the establishment, but for every negative I wrote (I nearly died due to medical neglect, another friend did die due to medical neglect, and another friend almost died, all because of transsexuality), I was able to spin it into a positive. I also spun my former intense medical phobia caused by the neglect into a positive. And for every situation I was critical of, I mentioned another doctor who helped restore my faith, reduce the phobia (I'm down to only being freaked by needles), or who have been such huge influences on me that they made me want to not only get over the phobia, but become a physician myself and spend time serving the community that tends to be treated so poorly by medicine.

The main thing I have learned by reading all the personal statements when I was on the readers list is that there are really no rules, only suggestions. A few people told me to never ever mention that I am trans in my personal statement even though it was such a huge factor in my decision. After reading something like 100+ statements from SDN, I learned that you can write almost anything so as long as it eventually is spun into a positive light and answers the question "Why Medicine?"

So far everyone who has read that version has insisted I not change a thing.

 

[Xinlitik]

Hmmm, I'd only put it in if you could reword it somehow. TBH, the way you put it in your post sounds very much like you're bitter about the medical profession, which I dont think will go over well.

Try to make it sound like you are inspired to enter medicine so you can prevent another person from having to experience the same things you did. (or something like that)