Internal Medicine Residency: Personal Statement Essay
Zahara Meghji's Personal Statement – Internal Medicine Residency
As an 10-year old girl growing up in Tanzania, I was fascinated and dumbfounded to see my aunt go to the hospital with a huge tummy and come back with a small crying baby because the "doctor worked his magic". In my formative years, I saw the power of medicine as it healed the lives of those closest to me: doctors reversed my brother's acute asthmatic attack, fixed my cousin's fractured femur and drained my brother’s subdural hematoma to save his life after a head trauma. This is why I chose to pursue a career in medicine.
In medical school, my favorite clinical rotation was Internal Medicine. I find the interaction between organ systems fascinating: this is where the magic …show more content…
happens! Internal Medicine has a lot to do with physiology which I find very interesting and hence it allows me to add a clinical aspect to physiology and there is a lot of thought process involved in diagnosing a patient, which makes it challenging When I started my internship at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), in the foothills of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro in Moshi, Tanzania, I developed clinical hands-on experience.
Initially I found it back-breaking with overwhelming expectations from residents and attending but as days went by, learning became easier. While discussing cases with colleagues, residents and attending, I came to understand that while it is clearly impractical to assume to know everything in medicine, what was most important was building my confidence and improving the basic, independent steps in managing any clinical problem. I could finally contribute substantially to the treatment of patients and play a critical role in their lives. These experiences taught me a lot about medicine’s power, but also its limitations. I was jolted with a strong sense of humility: we are doctors, not magicians.
Since then, I have continued to develop as a doctor, working in Tanzania's capital city Dar Es Salaam, at the Aga Khan Hospital and starting a residency program at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. This was when my pursuit of a career in medicine took a twist. In my first year there, my husband and I were blessed with the opportunity to migrate to the USA as permanent
residents.
Now that I have an opportunity to reflect what I have achieved so far, it's amazing to see how one can improve with repetition, from being a nervous novice intern to a confident, independent medical officer; from my hand shaking with nervousness to feeling competent in performing some of the life-saving invasive procedures. I try to exhaust all the possibilities before discussing with attending. During my regular employment as well as my first year residency, I had the opportunity to work with interns and medical students to contrast on our abilities, doing thorough examinations and devising management plans. Presented with these opportunities, I was struck by how far I've come in my training and, even more, how much further I have to go in its continuation.
Finally, and most importantly, this journey confirmed that I made the right choice to become a physician. Because, despite the long hours and stress, I still thrill to the struggle and its challenges. Now that we are settled here, I enthusiastically look forward to resuming my pursuit of a career in medicine. This has been a lifelong aspiration and the opportunity to pursue it in this part of the world is a real dream come true.
As an 10-year old girl growing up in Tanzania, I was fascinated and dumbfounded to see my aunt go to the hospital with a huge tummy and come back with a small crying baby because the "doctor worked his magic". In my formative years, I saw the power of medicine as it healed the lives of those closest to me: doctors reversed my brother's acute asthmatic attack, fixed my cousin's fractured femur and drained my brother’s subdural hematoma to save his life after a head trauma. This is why I chose to pursue a career in medicine.
In medical school, my favorite clinical rotation was Internal Medicine. I find the interaction between organ systems fascinating: this is where the magic …show more content…
happens! Internal Medicine has a lot to do with physiology which I find very interesting and hence it allows me to add a clinical aspect to physiology and there is a lot of thought process involved in diagnosing a patient, which makes it challenging When I started my internship at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), in the foothills of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro in Moshi, Tanzania, I developed clinical hands-on experience.
Initially I found it back-breaking with overwhelming expectations from residents and attending but as days went by, learning became easier. While discussing cases with colleagues, residents and attending, I came to understand that while it is clearly impractical to assume to know everything in medicine, what was most important was building my confidence and improving the basic, independent steps in managing any clinical problem. I could finally contribute substantially to the treatment of patients and play a critical role in their lives. These experiences taught me a lot about medicine’s power, but also its limitations. I was jolted with a strong sense of humility: we are doctors, not magicians.
Since then, I have continued to develop as a doctor, working in Tanzania's capital city Dar Es Salaam, at the Aga Khan Hospital and starting a residency program at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. This was when my pursuit of a career in medicine took a twist. In my first year there, my husband and I were blessed with the opportunity to migrate to the USA as permanent
residents.
Now that I have an opportunity to reflect what I have achieved so far, it's amazing to see how one can improve with repetition, from being a nervous novice intern to a confident, independent medical officer; from my hand shaking with nervousness to feeling competent in performing some of the life-saving invasive procedures. I try to exhaust all the possibilities before discussing with attending. During my regular employment as well as my first year residency, I had the opportunity to work with interns and medical students to contrast on our abilities, doing thorough examinations and devising management plans. Presented with these opportunities, I was struck by how far I've come in my training and, even more, how much further I have to go in its continuation.
Finally, and most importantly, this journey confirmed that I made the right choice to become a physician. Because, despite the long hours and stress, I still thrill to the struggle and its challenges. Now that we are settled here, I enthusiastically look forward to resuming my pursuit of a career in medicine. This has been a lifelong aspiration and the opportunity to pursue it in this part of the world is a real dream come true.