Is there anything else you would like to share with the Committee on Admissions? (optional) 3000 characters
In the rest of my application, I tried to convey how my past experience with adversity will guide my future as I strive towards a medical practice. However, I have yet to discuss how my experience working for an ambulance service prompted me to apply to Washington University School of Medicine.
When I started my employment in the urban environment of Peoria, Illinois as an EMT, I noticed that the full codes we responded to were different. Bystanders, who were strangers to the patients, were often doing CPR on the patient prior to our arrival. I later learned that this pattern of behaviour was the product of an extremely efficient community outreach program led by the company I worked for. The company invested in the community by teaching free CPR classes at city events and also supplied AEDs to local businesses in densely populated areas. Participants were also provided with a mobile app called PulsePoint, which sends notifications to the participants. The ultimate goal of this service was to direct these now trained individuals to the location of the medical emergencies with help from the app so they could start compressions on patients requiring CPR. Most of the time this happened prior to ambulance arrival. The result of this community outreach was a heart attack survival rate that is 5% higher than the national average. Shaped by this experience, I have learned that I want to follow in their footsteps and pursue a medical career with similarly broad impacts.
How I saw myself having those impacts was a question I pondered until I had committed a significant amount of time and energy to research. Having done so, I developed a love for discovery and the investigative way of thinking, and resultantly determined that this is how I want to make an impact. By sitting across from my patients regularly, and taking that energy back into the lab, I will be able to achieve a balanced and exciting career as a physician investigator.
Washington University provides me with the means to pursue this career by offering early clinical exposure and countless opportunities to complete research rotations in cutting edge labs. Washington University’s association with the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and other hospitals as well as the diversity fostered by St. Louis offers unparalleled exposure to novel academic and clinical opportunities alongside world renown physicians. I am most excited about the possibility of contributing to clinical research by completing the highly interdisciplinary Master of Science in Clinical Investigation degree, which will serve as the foundation for my future career as a physician investigator. In all of these ways, Washington University is the place where I may strive to become a leader in the medical community and have broad impacts similar to what I witnessed in Peoria, Illinois as an EMT.