Personal Statement
Narrative of Interests
“Be the change that you want to see in the world” has been a quote that has always motivated me throughout my medical career. I think of this quote often because we all have the power to make significant change that can make things better for our students, residents, and our community. My hope is that I get an opportunity to be a part of positive change for the community.
Teaching
My inspiration for teaching has always stemmed from sharing with others the things that I wish I knew when I was in their shoes. With that philosophy, we can all grow as a whole and become stronger as a community. Through my experiences on my teaching journey, I also became passionate about making sure that the residents feel confident about their knowledge base and clinic skills prior to graduating residency. In remembering how it felt to be a practicing physician on my own for the first time, I use that to guide me in how and what I teach on when trying to decide which pediatric outpatient topic to teach on. Even though I enjoy the challenge of teaching on the various outpatient pediatric topics, the topics that that are close to my heart are oral health and nutrition. When I see our young children come in for dental pre-op visit in preparation for a full restoration at age 2 it always make me question, is there something that we can do help prevent that? Those encounters lead me to dig deeper in oral health prevention and promoting more of the use of fluoride varnish in our clinics. The same question pops in my head when I see young children with BMIs in the 99th percentile and continue to rise despite the counseling from my limited knowledge of nutrition seemed to have no effect. My goal with increasing nutrition education is help empower our students and residents to feel that they have to the knowledge to help their patients reach a healthier weight before they feel obligated to referring out to a specialist.
Service
My heart has always been centered on giving back to the community that I live and work in from being a Girl Scout as a child, to creating my own community service group in college, to mentoring residents as faculty. I receive joy from working with people from different backgrounds and experiences to come together and reach a common goal. It feels good to bring your ideas to the table but also see how others would approach the situation and come to a compromise to come up with a solution for a common goal. It is always a constant reminder that we can always learn something new from those around us that’s why I enjoy working on committees and personally with medical students, residents, nursing staff, MAs, and my fellow collogues.