Acute Stroke Personal Statement

I have a background in surgical nursing, especially neurological problems and traumatic injuries from working as a registered nurse for three years and teaching assistant for a year after graduating the bachelor’s degree in Nursing (First class honors) from Khon Kaen University in 2008. This is a reason why I am interested in acute stroke care. While I worked as a teaching assistant, I found that further study was important for my profession and goal. Therefore, I decided to study in graduate program at Mahidol University. I have learnt statistics and nursing research theories, concepts in nursing, and health policy and leadership when studying at the master's degree level and have used acquired knowledge and additional study in quantitative

research to completely conduct my thesis “Relationships among responses to symptom, mode of transportation, and hospital arrival time of the acute stroke patients” in 2013-2014. Fortunately, my research was supported by the Stroke North-eastern Research Group in Thailand. I have improved my time management skills and developed interpersonal skills as a reflection by completely accomplishing the Master’s degree on time.

In addition, I have desired to be a researcher in behavior response to emergency conditions and awareness of acute illness patients. This is why I, then, conducted the study about “a quality of emergency medical dispatch system: a literature review” supported by the National Institute for Emergency Medicine of Thailand in 2016. I, eventually, became as a team member of the quality improvement of the emergency medical service project, the National Institute for Emergency Medicine in the same year.

For my research interest, I concentrate on gender differences and social contexts associated with decision-making about seeking medical help after stroke symptoms. To be precise, females among acute stroke patients likely suffer more severe strokes and have a greater risk of unfavorable outcomes than males that may be the result of the hospital arriving delay. My integrative review showed that the onset-to-hospital times are different between females and males, particularly in Asian-Pacific and Middle Eastern regions and the evidence revealed that presenting symptoms and responses to symptoms may be the causes of pre-hospital delay in women. Nevertheless, the evidence in a comparison of behaviors among female and male patients is lacking. Therefore, understanding of behavior response to stroke symptoms in women and the modifiable factors which strongly influence the decision-making process and prehospital time among women, are especially needed in this population.