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How To Reflect On Your Work Experience

Discussion in 'Medical Students Cafe' started by dr.omarislam, Sep 18, 2017.

  1. dr.omarislam

    dr.omarislam Golden Member

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    Everyone tells you that you need to have lots of work experience, but how do you use it to improve your application to medical school? Recent guidelines from the Medical Schools Council describe the purpose of work experience as threefold: to give you an experience of providing care, to provide you with a realistic understanding of the career, and to see if you have the attitudes and behaviours essential to being a successful doctor.

    However, medical schools want more than a list of your experiences. They want to know what you learnt, both about the medical profession and yourself. To gain this understanding you will need to reflect on your experiences. This entails looking back and thinking about what you have learnt. The learning might relate to the experience, to your response to the experience, or to the actions and reactions of other people.

    Showing reflection is important because medical schools are interested in your ability to learn about yourself from your experiences. Remember that successful medical practitioners are lifelong learners who use reflection throughout their career to improve their practice. Although you will learn more about reflection during your time at medical school, you need to show some understanding of it at this early stage.

    Questions to help you reflect

    Think about a recent work experience. Perhaps you volunteered at a local care home or observed a doctor carrying out a task. Below are several questions that can help you to focus on a particular moment of your work experience in more depth.

    • What was the best moment or what did you find most difficult?
    • Why was it memorable?
    • Was it something you did or something you observed?
    • How did you feel about it?
    • Why did you feel like that?
    • How did it impact on others?
    • What have you learnt about yourself as a result of this experience?
    • What have you learnt about others?
    • Does that learning relate to your ability to care or to your understanding of medicine as a career, or give you a personal insight into your suitability to be a doctor?
    • Was there a time when you felt uncomfortable or awkward?
    The answers to all these questions can make great starting points for learning about yourself and can be included in your personal statement. Other examples include: How did you feel and what did you do the first time you met a person with dementia or supported someone in pain? What did you learn from observing a doctor dealing with a challenging situation? How did the healthcare professional you observed communicate bad news or explain something complicated?

    Your impact

    When you reflect on your work experience, another angle to consider is whether others benefited from something that you did. Many applicants to medical school have leadership experience through holding a position of responsibility at school—for example, as a prefect or in a sports team. Think through how you felt, the positive impact of your actions on others, what you learnt about yourself from the experience, and how you applied that learning to improve. These are the sorts of things the medical school admissions team will be interested in. Summarising this in your personal statement will have a much greater impact than simply writing “as captain of the football team I have experience of leadership.”

    Show the values and attributes to study medicine

    Don’t think that you need to have a long and theatrical story about how your work experience placement affirmed your choice of career. Examples of reflective learning do not have to be dramatic or impressive—small things such as holding someone’s hand or smiling can trigger a worthwhile piece of reflective learning that can go a long way.

    The values and attributes that medical schools will be looking for in their future students are summarised in a recent publication by the Medical Schools Council in their “Statement on the core values and attributes needed to study medicine.” Look at these values and attributes and use them to guide your choice of work experience. This document is particularly useful if you think you have limited direct medical or healthcare related experience because it outlines transferrable qualities needed for medicine that you could pick up in non-medical experiences.

    Although reflection focuses on your need to show personal learning, in my experience some applicants to medical school are keen to show that they possess attributes such as empathy, respect, resilience, and good communication skills, but without showing a deep recognition of why these attributes are important for future medical practitioners. Try not to describe activities in a way that the admissions tutor is left thinking, “That was great for the applicant but what about the others—for example, the patient?” I have seen statements where the applicant describes observing a doctor delivering bad news or carrying out an intimate procedure, and I am left wondering whether the patient was aware that the observer was effectively a member of the public and not a qualified doctor. The General Medical Council’s opening statement on the duties of the doctor requires them to, “Make the care of your patient your first concern.” Wherever possible, it is important to reflect this in the outcome of the personal learning that comes from reflection.

    Conclusion

    In summary, when preparing your application to medical school think about what you have done and about what you have learnt, both about the career of a doctor and about yourself and personal suitability, and focus on that, rather than give a simple list or description of your experiences. Don’t underestimate the time it will take to reflect properly before you write your personal statement. When you think you have finished it, ask others who have not been involved in writing, reviewing, or revising the statement to appraise it. Sometimes, something that seems obvious to you can be confusing or misleading to another reader.

    And, finally, remember that you might be asked follow-up questions about experiences mentioned in your personal statement if and when you are invited to interview. Be careful not to mislead the reader of the statement into thinking you have done more than you have—this may put you in a difficult situation if you are asked to discuss something in more detail at interview.

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