PA School Reapplicant Personal Statement Checklist

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1. Jenn Dedo says

   May 23, 2023 at 2:13 pm

   It had been a long week of senior fall finals and an even longer day of anxiously waiting in a cold surgery waiting room. My friend was having knee surgery and her parents were not able to come into town until the day after, so I was relaying updates to them and spending the night in the hospital post operation. When the surgery was nearly over, the doctor came out to talk with me in person and her parents over the phone. He assured them the procedure had gone well but they were still worried and confused by the medical jargon. An hour later, the physician associate came out. He was warm and able to explain clearly how the procedure had gone from anchoring the tendon to the last stitch he himself put in. I could hear how it put my friend’s parents at ease. It was yet another experience confirming the conclusion I had made long before to become a PA.
   It has always seemed natural for me to go into some form of healthcare since I was raised by a family of healthcare professionals. My mother is a registered nurse, father an anesthesiologist, maternal grandmother a nurse, and both grandfathers well-known and respected surgeons. I remember asking my dad endless questions about definitions of unfamiliar medical terms; I was very proud that I could say big words such as “anesthesiologist” as a small child. I was eager to learn all I could about how and why things worked while combining it with a passion for helping others. Once I reached college, I was excited to choose kinesiology as my major so I could explore several professions that would allow me to do both. I do not know specifically when I became aware of PAs, but I began to notice them more as I worked and volunteered in a variety of settings. I realized it was exactly what I was looking for.
   I have been able to speak with or observe many PAs since coming to this realization. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell who the PA is in the hospital settings. Many of them work seamlessly with their doctors while also having a great deal of autonomy. I saw this more clearly when I shadowed an ENT PA as he visited with patients in the clinic. He could diagnose and prescribe on his own but would discuss cases with the lead doctor from time to time. A similar dynamic was evident with a surgical thoracic PA I shadowed. She showed me how the thoracoscopic tools worked to cut and seal the lung as she carefully removed a tumor from a COPD patient. She gave me the opportunity to hold the tumor while she installed the chest tubes and stitched the incisions.
   Shadowing and interning were great for gathering information about the role of a PA, but I wanted to do more to build my experience. I decided to earn my EMT certification while still in college and was thrilled at how it was a practical parallel to my kinesiology studies. Additionally, it led to the post undergraduate job I am in now, working in an ER, where I have been able to assist in the care of a variety of cases and learn new skills. Recently, I assisted in a case involving a middle eastern child who had a deep laceration in her leg. She was panicking, not letting anyone near her, and her parents could not speak English well enough to explain what had happened. After waiting for her to relax a little, I asked a very important question: what her favorite color was. She said pink and we tried to list all the things we knew of in that color. She even taught me how to say it in Farsi while we put in the IV and prepared to suture the gash.
   Despite my surety in choosing this career path, I have struggled to answer the outwardly simple question of “Why do you want to be a PA?”. The combination of my upbringing and variety of experiences brought it to my attention and I have not been able to let it go. While I cannot pin down precisely when I decided to be a PA, I know I what kind of PA I want to be. I want to be warm, easy to understand, and engaging the way the orthopedic PA was with my friend’s family post operation. In the end, it is a simple question to which I have only a simple answer: because it is right for me.

   I feel really good about this and consider it a final draft. I worry that I may be too long even though it does not reach the official character limit. Otherwise I am ready to submit it unless there are any glaring errors.

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