ObGyn Personal Statement Examples

ObGyn Personal Statement Examples

ObGyn Personal Statement Example #1

My first day on this planet was almost my last, as complications during my birth stacked up against both me and my mother, who had made the difficult decision to continue with my pregnancy, despite the risks she knew she was taking. She had to be extra careful during her pregnancy, and there were several moments during the course of my delivery when either she or I were nearly lost. I have heard the story several times, and the heroine of the story is always the “miracle-worker” ObGyn who respected my mother’s decisions throughout her pregnancy and who fought tooth and nail to see her patients through.

In short, my course was set almost as soon as I was born – perhaps even before – and I have long aspired to help with the birthing process. However, I did not always want to be a doctor. My first goal in life was to be a midwife, and in fact, I had completed the training and was interning with a local midwifery center when I decided to push myself further and go into medicine.

Wondering how to write a residency personal statement? Watch this video:

I believe that this background as a midwife-in-training gives me a strong foundation for a residency as an ObGyn. I am intimately familiar with the birthing process, and I have assisted in many births already; I continued to work with the midwives as a way of paying for medical school. Each birth is unique and special, a thing all its own, as distinctive as both the pregnancies that proceed them and the children that follow.

I appreciate all aspects of this process as well. Many people think primarily in terms of the birth, a few ultrasounds beforehand, and perhaps a prenatal class. But there is so much more to that process, including caring for patients and their health in a holistic way. Healthy women make healthy mothers, and babies are patients, too, as soon as they arrive. I feel privileged to have been a part of consultations, meetings, home visits, follow-ups, and all aspects of the midwife process. Because your program has a holistic approach to its teaching and health care, I believe that I will be a perfect fit, comfortable with your methods, and able to contribute in a meaningful way.

Of course, there is more to being an ObGyn than just concerning oneself with pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the early days of childcare. Female health is a full commitment for ObGyns and the whole health care team. At medical school, I connected with these aspects of health care on rotations with family medicine and internal medicine, as well as the occasional segue into emergency medicine.

One of my most harrowing experiences was while I was on rotation in an ER, and a young woman came in with extreme trauma. She suffered from multiple lacerations, bruises, and fractures. She was a victim of domestic abuse, and we had to spend hours just trying to stabilize her. I cried after my shift that night, not just because of the brutality of the woman’s injuries, but because the cause seemed so arbitrary and barbaric. What does this have to do with being an ObGyn? Well, this is an unfortunate, ugly side of women’s health issues, and I have firsthand knowledge now of the horrors that can complicate medicine for women.

For more advice on writing residency personal statements, check this infographic:

On the happier side, I got to check in with that patient as she recovered; continuing my appreciation for holistic health, I both witnessed and contributed to her wellbeing by offering psychological and emotional support and encouraging her to take the steps necessary in her life to move forward and receive healing in mind, body, and spirit – if such a term applies here.

There is always that knife’s edge of tragedy which lurks in medicine, and I believe this is felt nowhere more keenly than in women’s health and medicine. As an ObGyn, I am prepared and eager to help my patients in all aspects of their lives, to be vigilant and supportive, and to be the kind of person who will be there for her patients in all ways and aspects of their health care. My mother’s model was her ObGyn but not just because of one day of touch-and-go with my mother and me. No, that doctor started out as a heroine because when she told my mother of the risks of continuing with my pregnancy, she always honored my mother’s decisions: “Here is the problem, and I will help in any way you want. What would you like to do?” Helping patients always starts with that mandate and impulse: what can we do for our patients?

Your program is also very patient-oriented, and I think it’s important to keep that focus. Research is great, but our primary goal is our patients – that is my primary goal as well. We are here for them. We heal them. My experiences in the ER, as a midwife, and throughout my personal life – from my birth until now – have been teaching and preparing me for this journey, a journey I started on the first day of the rest of my life.

ObGyn Personal Statement Example #2

When I was a teenager, I felt like I was fighting a war with my body. I think a lot of teenagers feel that way, but regardless of others, it was certainly how I felt. Changes came rapidly, and I understood very few of them at the time. My school was rather backward in many ways, so I received little help, support, or guidance. Eventually, at a visit with my family doctor, I found somebody supportive and who had full, complete, satisfying answers to my questions. This is partly the reason I pursued medicine.

Your residency program has a strong focus on youth work and outreach. Recognizing that your city has underprivileged populations who are in great need of health care, you seek to provide that. This is something that I respect and why I made the decision to apply for my residency as an ObGyn specifically with you. I believe that my experiences will help me relate to patients and deliver the best care possible.

My primary goal is to work as an ObGyn, but I would also love to work with youth to give them a better sense of who they are. I want to specifically assist with programs just like yours, and so this residency is exactly where I want to be in life. Ultimately, I would want to create more programs, expand them, and provide training for other physicians to better assist and serve communities.

To some extent, I believe all medicine is community medicine because we are all part of a community, and we all serve that community. I saw this on display most prominently in my clinical rotations for family medicine, which was when I got to see the very human, everyday aspects of the health care profession. During my rotations, I learned the value of taking time with patients, making sure that they were not just looked after physically but that they felt heard and seen. I saw my supervising physician, Dr. Patel, solicit extra information from his patients – critical information to their health – just because he created space and gave them the time to talk. He never appeared rushed, and when I asked him about it, Dr. Patel said that this was partly an attitude and partly time management. He showed me those time management skills as well, and I continue to employ his rubrics to create my own oases of time that allow me to get more done throughout the day.

Women’s health has always been very important to me, and I focused on this aspect of health care in my laboratory and research work at medical school. I wanted to know more about what was missing. There are great gaps in research and understanding for female health, neglected by years of disinterest from a primarily male medical establishment. During medical school, I was fortunate enough to be included in assisting with three studies on women’s health. The one in which I played the largest role looked at how myocardial infarctions manifest differently in males and females and sought to create more efficient ways of identifying female symptoms and early warning signs. We also went around to local high schools, educating students and faculty alike on our findings, to promote more community health care.

My dual beliefs in community health care and women’s health led me to select ObGyn as my specialty, and because of my background and experiences, I believe I am ideally suited to this program. Your particular program also emphasizes teaching and building future leaders, which I am keen to learn as well. I believe your emphasis on team building and working in groups will let me quickly learn how to work within a team as well as how to lead one. My own experience with teamwork stretches back to the last two years of my undergraduate, during which my psychology and social work program focused on small groups, in addition to taking on a teaching role for ourselves, each other, and incoming classes. I carried this knowledge and method of constantly learning and teaching – indeed, often interchanging them – into medical school. Throughout medical school, I encouraged my cohorts to help each other by sharing knowledge and insights. I organized a study group, focused on this team-teaching idea. It was a success, and we were some of the most efficient studiers I have ever encountered.

Between the teaching aspect and your community outreach focus, I believe this is an excellent learning environment for me and the perfect foundation on which to build my ideal career. My passion is for community-focused medicine and teaching, and I believe my best role will be as an ObGyn, assisting young women in the community with their health care and teaching them how to gain agency in the battle for their own bodies and health.

Tips for Writing an ObGyn Personal Statement

Personal statements are the best way to introduce yourself, summarize your most relevant work and research, and state why you want to do the specific residency you are applying to. “True north” for you, while working on your personal statement, will be to constantly show why you are the perfect candidate and why their program is the perfect one for you.

Remember old adages like “show don’t tell,” and dive into your experiences and history that show you in the best light. Keep your future in mind as well; it can help to include your aspirations and why this particular residency is ideal for helping you achieve them.

But all of that is general. The ObGyn residency will require some specifics. Here is a list of the most important experience and knowledge a prospective ObGyn should have:

Additionally, you might want to include personal anecdotes or experiences in your statement. Have you ever been pregnant or been involved with someone else’s pregnancy? Do you have siblings? Have you dealt with women’s health, directly or indirectly? While few people have the actual medical knowledge, most people have encountered a person who has experienced pregnancy. Draw on some of those experiences for a more personal, even vulnerable, personal statement.

Conclusion

With these example statements and expert tips in mind, you will find it much easier to put your own experiences into the perfect personal statement. While you still have a long journey of writing and editing ahead of you, you can confidently continue that journey knowing that you have already taken the first steps: seeing the path that others have trod.

FAQs

To your success,

Your friends at BeMo

BeMo Academic Consulting

Want more free tips? Subscribe to our channels for more free and useful content!

TikTok

YouTube

Instagram

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

LinkedIn

Twitter