A Career As A Medical Assistant: A Personal Statement

The eldest child of refugee Sarajevo immigrants, I learned my dedicated, caring, yet practical parents would never have nine to five jobs. Fortunately, in true Albanian fashion, my grandparents have always lived in our home, imparting wisdom I have come to appreciate. As so often happens in families of this nature, as a youngster I started working in my father’s general practioner’s office, assuming I too would eventually study medicine.
It is from the nursing staff that I realized what my biology studies did not emphasize; a major problem with translational research is basic science results can be unpredictable when applied to specific clinical applications. It became clearer with each of my field positions during college that pursuing advanced nursing training would be how I could best address why most of basic science’s promising leads do not translate to effective clinical treatment outcomes. As a Physician Assistant, I could work on research and clinical trials to determine why so many scientific experiments’ results are still significantly incomplete with missing piece(s) altering the ultimate clinical effect of the tested intervention.
Shadowing physician assistants (PAs) and physicians, I saw the sincere care from many disciplines who not only were equipped …show more content…
My beliefs of what patient-centered care should be completely changed as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia taught me tragedy. I came to grasp that growing old is one of life’s most challenging endeavors with my grandfather’s congestive heart failure. The challenges of mental health diagnoses’ dated views with the attached life-limiting and sometimes life-threatening stigmas and discrimination, especially for the aged, were unexpected. Empirical medical advice and insightful real-world applications to better the lives of the elderly are paltry compared to younger age