Opinions are much appreciated on my PS!

[afaulise]

Hi everyone, here is my PS. I have good stats but I know that a bad essay can really hurt my chances so any opinions/critiques you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

I want more. I love my job right now. Working in clinical research has been extremely rewarding and educational for me. I have always known that I wanted to work in medicine and this job has opened my eyes to all of the possibilities available in the medical field. I have worked with almost every level of care in health care Doctors, NPs, lab techs, and much more. However, most important to me has been my time working with Physician Assistants. I have had the invaluable opportunity to not only shadow PAs but work with them on a day to day basis and see what their job truly entails. So many things in my life have led to this desire of becoming a PA such as my time in the Navy and more recently my work in Clinical Research. However something happened recently that has turned what was previously a lifelong dream in to a passion to take the next step and become a PA.

 

I had a patient that was such a wonderful woman. She was very sick and we all knew that she was dying. One of the clinical trials I am currently working on was the last option after a long line of failed treatment options. I wanted her in my study; she was the perfect candidate and someone that despite everything just wanted to get better. I screened her and started the process to get her enrolled but then I was held up. Political nonsense that was outside of my control was telling me that I was not going to be able to afford this woman the very last, albeit small, chance. I was devastated. The Principal Investigator that I work for is amazing and cares about her patients immensely however she has a lot of patients and is an extremely busy woman. She did not have the time or ability to fight this battle for a research study. She did however give me permission to do whatever I could to get this patient enrolled. I am proud to say that I did. It took me weeks but in the end I won my fight. To say the least I came out of this with the label “tenacious”. In the end my patient still passed away. It was just too late to help her. Her death was unfortunate but one of my main consolations was that both her and her family knew that I had fought for them and I had done everything I could to help. I was able to look them in the eye and know that I had not let them down.

 

As a clinical research coordinator there is only so much I can do. While this job is wonderful it just confirms to me that I want more. Right now I am a very small part of a patients care. As a PA I would be able to have even more of an impact for my patients. I was so excited at this one small victory, how exciting will it be the day I can help my patient survive with a treatment that I recommended?  I have had the fortune of working in a medical environment that relies on a team approach. Coordinators, MDs, PAs, nurses we all work together to make these clinical trials work. I like working as a part of a team and that is a fundamental part of being a PA, collaboration. I am ready to take that next step in medicine. I want to be able to actually care for patients, something that is just out of my reach right now.