PSYCHIATRY RESIDENCY PERSONAL STATEMENT

Mike, a young man with schizophrenia, was my very first patient on the locked psychiatric ward. Throughout our relationship, I began feeling more comfortable asking him about his hallucinations and I felt as if we were connecting. When we held a family meeting to inform his mother that he was ready for discharge, I believed that he was accepting his schizophrenia and would use his obvious intellect to manage his disease and move forward with his life. On Monday, when I learned that he had stabbed himself with a knife in his mother’s kitchen, I was devastated. I had never felt so connected to a patient, so responsible, and so distressed by his outcome. At that moment, it became clear to me that psychiatry was a field that would either be my passion for the rest of my career or something I needed to avoid to protect myself from this type of emotional devastation.

Early on in medical school I knew that I wanted several things from my career as a physician, including intellectual challenge, ongoing close relationships with my patients, and the opportunity to provide quality care to patients with few resources. I truly enjoyed the peer counseling and research in psychiatry that I did as an undergraduate, as well as my preclinical psychiatry and behavioral science courses, but had not seriously considered psychiatry as a career before starting my clerkships. I was surprised by my how much I loved my psychiatry rotations. When I found myself on the locked psychiatric ward, working closely with patients like Mike and learning about their illnesses, I realized that I was deeply moved by their stories and devoted to doing what I could to help them manage their diseases. During the month that I spent in child psychiatry, I felt confident and excited to assess new patients and to create plans for their care. These rotations helped me to recognize that what I had always wanted in my career as a physician was in ample supply in psychiatry.

While the physician that I have envisioned myself becoming only became a psychiatrist during my clinical rotations, that physician has always taken care of those with the most desperate needs. I originally decided to become a physician with the hopes of pursuing a challenging career with a great potential for doing service. This has changed very little. As a medical student, I have devoted much of my time to service-related activities. I have worked extensively with the Urban Free Clinic, which serves poor and underserved individuals in the community. I volunteered at Urban throughout my first year, became a member of the steering committee in my second year, and used Medical School’s flexible curriculum to find the time to manage the clinic in my third year.

I have also been the co-chair of the Center for Public Service student advisory board and a member of the Medical Student Public Service Scholars Program advisory board. These positions have allowed me to contribute to the quality of service related activities conducted at the medical center and on the greater campus. They also reinforced my long-standing interest in public service at the level of policy making and management. I believe that quality research can be an effective tool for ensuring quality healthcare for the underserved. I conducted a Community Partners Medical Scholars research project to provide data for the Urban Free Clinic to help improve the healthcare that it provides. I am pleased that the results are being published in the Journal for Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved so that they might help free clinics nationwide.
While I understand that caring so much about patients such as Patrick could set me up for sadness in the future, I have also come to realize that such devotion will keep my interest in psychiatry strong throughout my life. I strongly believe in the importance of mental healthcare and I am thrilled to embark upon a career as a psychiatrist. There is much work to be done to improve access to quality mental healthcare, and I am extremely motivated to contribute my energy and talent towards that goal. As I look forward, I not only intend to help the underserved through my practice but also through my pursuits in policy, research and education. I am certain that this combination will provide a challenging, stimulating, and rewarding career that will make me happy and proud to be a psychiatrist throughout my life.