Personal Essay: A Career In Medicine

A career in medicine has been a childhood dream for me. I was born and raised in a small and underdeveloped city in Sri Lanka, where hospitals and doctors were sparse. At the age of ten, I lost my father due to a lack of immediate medical care. Shortly thereafter, a civil war erupted and I witnessed countless deaths throughout my childhood. At a young age, I understood that many deaths could have been avoided, if the sick and injured had access to medical professionals. These experiences have fueled my passionate desire to live my life as a physician.

My goal was and is to be a competent doctor and provide compassionate care to all patients. With much dedication, I became a doctor. I wanted to help the underprivileged, especially those in rural areas. I began work in North Sri Lanka where the civil war had most severely afflicted and I witnessed an average of 100 casualties daily. As there was a shortage of medical professionals, I gained the opportunity of becoming a well-rounded physician.

I came to Canada because my wife is a Canadian citizen who is also pursuing her medical career in Canada. This gave me the opportunity of working in a medical community abroad, which I knew would

enhance my skills and experiences as a Doctor. I learned about Canada’s Universal Healthcare System and was fascinated with the idea that all Canadians had access to healthcare regardless of medical history, personal income or societal status. This was a stark contrast to my experience with healthcare in my home country.

I volunteered as a visiting Mental Health Worker and shadowed a family physician in Toronto, Ontario. I saw a broad spectrum of patients and found it simple to build good relationships with them. I discovered that family physicians had a distinctive and fundamental responsibility in counselling and treating patients. I realized that they also had great accountability in building trustworthy doctor-patient relationships and taking measures to deliver lifelong care to most patients. I soon developed a strong interest for family medicine.

Having been born in Sri Lanka, schooled abroad in Russia, and building my career in Canada, I have adapted to different cultures and circumstances. Due to my diverse background, I bonded with patients from wide cultural and socioeconomic perspectives on a personal level. This affiliation is essential to building healthy doctor-patient relationships, a vital feature of Family Practice.

I returned to Sri Lanka in 2014 to practice medicine, gain experience to bring back to Canada, and at the same time help the people who were resettled after the civil war ended. Currently as a Medical Officer of Health (MOH) with the Ministry of Health in Sri Lanka, I have responsibilities for the promotion of public health and prevention of diseases. This includes many underserved communities, and working in such rural areas, I saw a real appreciation for public health measures. I have assessed and determined the health status of a population and developed effective interventions in order to improve health. I am responsible for environmental sanitation, school health and the control of communicable diseases. I also provide a great deal of family health care, especially to mothers and infants. I have taken part in research, which is currently sent for ethical review. I am committed to becoming a Public Health physician in Canada and I believe these valuable experiences in Sri Lanka will make an immense contribution to the Canadian health system.

Involvement in various organizations such as with the Red Cross, WHO, CDC and the IMHO has allowed me to enrich my leadership, communication and interpersonal skills.

I consider myself to be a mature, goal oriented, and dedicated individual who enjoys interacting with groups of people. I am devoted to improving the health of the entire population through population-based assessment and intervention, and take part in shaping public health policies. As a physician, I prefer not to depend on pharmacotherapy as a primary tool of treatment. Instead, I want to recognize the underlying cause of a disease and by preventive measures bring about real change at a population level. These attributes are important qualities of a public health physician, and I am confident I possess them

all.

I look forward to the opportunity of joining McMaster University’s reputable and innovative Public Health and Preventive Medicine including Family Medicine. McMaster provides a diverse patient population from all walks of life and I’m impressed by your academic and community-based program built on the principles of population health, all levels of disease prevention, health promotion and protection. I believe your program will train physicians like me to become competent practitioners in public health for Ontario and for Canada. I’m also looking forward to doing the Masters of Public Health program, which will allow me to meet the needs of the community as well as my personal goals of going beyond a typical physician. In exchange, I am confident my unique life experiences, broad medical and clinical knowledge, and my personal attributes will make a definite contribution to both the program and the community.