medical residency personal statement I have been a nurse since 1997. I went to medical school in 2005 and I am curently completing my last 3 months. I applied for my residency and I had to write a personal statement. Obviously I want to talk about my years of critical care experience as a nurse and how that sets me apart and gives me a clinical advantage. I have been through so much turmoil because of the fact that I am a nurse in medical school. Its been like walking on egg shells! I have to make sure that I ask questions with just the right sensitivity so that my senior doctors dont get offended. But I am just trying to learn!!! Its been really hard. Now that I am applying for my residency, I have found that I actually have to play down this advantage to simply having more 'communication and sensitivity' skills!!!! I cannot talk about having more clinical experience or an advantage in this respect in any way. Its made me so angry and I want to do something about it. I just received a rejection letter today with my previous personal statement. I changed my personal statement so there is less of an emphasis on my clinical nursing experience. There is no other reason for the rejection since I scored very high on my license exams, in the top 2% of the nation, I graduated 5th in my class, I was the community service leader for the honor society, I have some research experience, I also volunteered writing some guidelines. I am a strong candidate and I know I was rejected because my personal statement indicated that I have an advantage over my peers by being able to recognize critically ill patients. I want to do something about this.

not to mention handmaidens with octopus arms there is still the picture of the nurse as the handmaiden, responding to every whim! i work in a busy surgical ward who isn't busy? but people seem to become paralysed when they are admitted. no wonder we get behind with time management.... i am loving the ads that show what a nurses job is reallly like - i'd like to some more... of nurses in regular surg wards or theatres and esp emergency.. as a nurse who's been a patient in a busy ED recently you feel like telling other people to just wait. we only have two hands!

reading that took me back to the days when I was a nursing student. Hanging out at the pub on a Thurs night with my friends and as soon as the men (well boys really) found out I was studying to be a nurse they would then ask me for a sponge bath, so original isn't it? *roll eyes*

angels or temptresses Maybe the media and TV shows in particular need to start portraying nurses as valuable and knowledgable members of the medical team, including making decisions about patient care. This image is not helped by TV serials where every nurse is sleeping with either another nurse or Dr at some point, prancing around in the tightest uniform (that is constantly changing week to week) putting hudson masks on patients at one litre/min !! Maybe a nurse version of House might do the trick and have it focussed on different nurse specialty areas week by week so that the community gets a more accurate idea on what we health professionals do and have to put up with. Cheers Deb

The solution is simple. More male nurses in scrubs which show hairy backs. :D

I sooooooooooo agree ....... you wrote well !

angels or temptresses Patience I can fully understand where you are coming from.When Nurse Uncut was first launched I had the same experience .I could not believe what happened when you did a search.So maybe we need to do a lot more media to get the message out there.