🎯Introduction

🏗The Framework: MESRP

1. Conveys motivations for medicine - why you want to study medicine.
2. Conveys engagement with medicine - what you have done to learn more about medicine and care.
3. Conveys suitability for medicine - what makes you the ideal candidate for medicine.
4. Shows reflection - you can meaningfully interpret past experiences and learn from them.
5. Conveys passion for medicine - how important studying medicine is to you.

⚖️What to Include?

• Your Motivations: Reasons for applying to medicine
  
  
  • Outline why you're applying to medicine.
  • Is it the subject interest and wanting to know more about the human body?
  • Is it because you want to help people?
• Try to use reasons that broadly cover these 2 principles:
  
  
  1. Medicine as an interesting subject - the scientific side.
  2. Medicine as a vocation to help people - the human empathy side.
• Now, you and thousands of other people are going to say broadly the same motivations. But, we're going to spice it up and make it uniquely yours with reflection and passion, but more on this later. Also, try including more out of the box motivations such as interest in global health, public health or driving research (if this is something that applies to you of course).
  
  
• Your Engagement: Talk about things you've done to pursue medicine
  
  
• It's important to include the things you've done to engage with and explore medicine.
  
  
• This includes:
  
  
  • Work experience in GPs and Hospitals.
  • Volunteering in Nursing Homes, Youth Centres, Day Cares.
  • Reading medical journals like the Student BMJ, medical books, keeping up-to-date with current medical news and topics.
  • Any other relevant experiences that shows that you care enough about medicine to actually do something about it.
• Your Suitability: Show that you are the ideal candidate for medicine
  
  
• This is what it boils down to. Out of the 1000s of students that apply. Why should you be picked? You have to use the personal statement to really sell yourself. To do this effectively, it's important to first consider what qualities make a good doctor or medical student.
  
  
• A list of ideal qualities is also called a person specification and an example of one, is this:
  
  
  • Able to demonstrate communication, team-working and leadership skills.
  • Able to demonstrate personal maturity, ability to work under pressure (resilience), enthusiasm, determination to succeed and ability to adapt and overcome adversity.
  • Excellent insight into own limitations and takes steps to improve and overcome these.
  • Able to demonstrate how to escalate concerns and seek help when uncertain.
  • Able to take initiative and pro-actively direct own learning.
  • Good time management skills and ability to balance academic, clinical and extracurricular/ personal roles.
• So here's a list of key person specifications that make you a good doctor and that makes you an attractive candidate for medical school:
  
  
  • communication
  • team-working
  • leadership
  • resilience
  • determination
  • insight
  • empathy
  • compassion
  • pro-active
  • organised
  • good time managements
• Whenever you're thinking of what to include in your personal statement always think of these key terms, and ask yourself "this thing that I have done, does it link to any of these person specifications?"
  
  
• If so, great! Include it and highlight how your experience shows that you have this quality or helped you develop this quality.
  
  

• E.g. "My participation in the Youth Enterprise Programme helped me hone both my leadership and team-working skills. It also helped me develop skills such as empathy and conflict resolution. **Use a specific example of a scenario etc."

• If it doesn't link with any of the qualities, ask yourself why am I including this? Does it add anything to explaining your motivations or engagement, if the answer is no then you're probably better off leaving it out.
  
  
• Your Reflections: Reflect at each point to show that you have introspective ability.
  
  
• It's important to not just mention these key terms vaguely. Everyone can find the key terms from a Google Search and if you were to just list them out, you're unlikely to get far in the application process. The art is to use specific examples and scenarios you've been in, link it to a person specification and then reflect on it.
  
  
• For example, in the previous sentence:
  
  

• E.g. "My participation in the Youth Enterprise Programme helped me hone both my leadership and team-working skills. It also helped me develop skills such as empathy and conflict resolution."

• You've mentioned the Youth Enterprise Programme and then gone onto list several person specification qualities. This is okay, but it's not excellent. To help this get to the next level, you should use a specific example. Take this:
  
  

• E.g. "During my participation in the Youth Enterprise Programme I was able to hone my leadership and team-working skills. As a specific example, there was disagreement amongst the team about product selection and I was able to discuss calmly with each member and suggest a voting system to decide on the final product. This helped me develop skills such as empathy and conflict resolution by engaging with other team-members to understand their point of view."

• Now obviously this has now become much larger in content, but that's the point. A specific example with adequate detail to show a select number of person specifications is better than a vague sentence that lists loads of person specification with no evidence or reflection.
  
  
• Your Passion: Show that you are passionate about medicine
  
  
• The easiest way to show that you're passionate about medicine is to use emotive language and powerful adjectives.
  
  

• For eg. "I like medicine because I can help people"

• This is an okay sentence that conveys your motivations for studying medicine, but it's not very passionate is it. Now take this:
  
  

• "My excitement for medicine was sparked when I understood how it empowers doctors to positively impact people during their time of need".

• The 2 sentences essentially say the same thing but the latter uses multiple powerful, emotive words.
  
  

🧰Planning

• Open up a document and write down these 3 headings: motivation, engagement and suitability.
• Then write down using bullet-points your motivations, things you've done to engage and all the key person specifications I mentioned under the respective categories.
• Then add some flesh to these points, especially writing examples of experiences you've had that highlight why you possess those person specifications.
• This is a far less daunting and a far easier way to start planning.
• At this stage don't restrict yourself. Create a list of everything you could ever possibly say relating to these points.
• Then start thinking about the structure of your personal statement.

🏗Structure

• Try to have an introduction at the beginning where the first sentence is as unique as possible to grab the attention of the reader.
• Then go into your motivations, engagement and ending with suitability, use reflection and passionate language throughout.
• For each point you make, link it to a key specification, provide evidence from your life and reflect on it.

✒️How to Write First Draft

• After planning and coming up with a brief structure. Try to re-order your plan into a draft.
• Turn those bullet points into full sentences that link and flow from one point to another.
• Find connections and build a story.
• Still don't worry too much about the word-count yet.
• So go as hard as you can and want.
• Make sure to add passion to every sentence to make it stand-out and show that you really care.

🔧How to Refine

• Now it's time to start thinking about refining and moulding it down to fit the character and line count.
• It's likely the problem is that you have too much rather than too little, so you have to prioritise what to put in.
• Easiest way to decide this is to think, does this sentence contribute to MESRP.
• If it doesn't fit under any of these categories, then chuck it.
• If it does fit, then consider if it's redundant, meaning is it just repeating something that you've already said with another point. If so, then go ahead and delete this also.

🔬Review

• Send it to your teachers, anyone you know who is a doctor, medical, involved in interviewing or just good at writing.
• Get lots of feedback.

📤Submit

🤷‍♂️What next?