Feedback please :)

[angie_marie14]

When I was ten years I old, seven years into my cheerleading career, I fell doing a front handspring, my first of 17 injuries. When I told my parents about the accident, they did not believe anything was wrong; they thought I was being a hypochondriac. So I suffered for almost two weeks before receiving medical attention; at which point my wrist was placed in a hard cast for six weeks due to a fractured growth plate.  Once the day came to get my cast taken off, I was excited to be free but terrified at the sight of the saw. This young woman took the saw and ran it across her arm to ensure me of its safety. Then, she removed my cast and showed me my x-rays. I later found out this woman was a physician assistant. Ever since this visit, my life changed forever; I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life helping to heal injuries to enhance the comfort of others.

 

My many visits with her over the years only confirmed my ambitions of wanting to be a physician assistant; during those visits we not only discussed my treatment plan, but also the profession of physician assistant. After one of my appointments with her, I rushed home, grabbed my laptop and began researching the profession known as physician assistant.  I realized this was a profession I could see myself in for the rest of my life. I was so happy she was able to introduce me to the idea of having such a meaningful career. This profession will allow me to establish a deeper relationship with the patients, which is very important to me.

 

A little over a year ago, I began to work as a patient transporter at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. My job allowed me to see inside of every department including: Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, Intensive Care, Surgery, Cardiology, and Pediatrics to name a few.  It was then that I realized I did not want to specialize in orthopedics and was reassured that becoming a physician assistant would be the perfect career for me. I will learn about various specialties of medicine and have the opportunity to practice in whichever specialty I want to at any given time throughout my career. Since then, I have shadowed physician assistants in numerous specialties as they practiced medicine, performed procedures, and assisted with surgery.

 

My personality and life experiences have led me to my professional decision of becoming a physician assistant. I intend to approach this new journey the same as my previous endeavors: I will do whatever is necessary to reach my goals. I have experienced numerous personal hardships throughout my life, but I have refused and will continue to refuse to let those stand in the way of reaching goals I set for myself. 

[Disciple3]

First off, I like it.  The first paragraph keeps your attention and the essay as a whole is upbeat.  You stay focused on the question "Why PA".  That being said, it's only about 2200 characters when CASPA allows you 5000.  I filled up about 4700 in mine, which I still felt wasn't enough space to fit what I wanted.  Do you have any specific patient care experiences you can talk about that help answer "why PA"?  Something that happened when shadowing perhaps?  In the last paragraph you mention numerous personal hardships while the only thing mentioned in the essay was cheerleading injuries, maybe one of these can be discussed and related to how it would make you a better PA.  This would strengthen that statement instead of just saying it alone, because well - everyone has hardships. 

[tommyding]

Similar to previous sentiments, theres a lack of HCE and details on how those experiences not only made you decide to pursue a career as a PA but also how they prepared you and made you ready for this career. You want to SHOW compassion, perseverence, responsibility, ability to make decisions in short amount of time, lessons learned, etc,etc by describing your HCE or non HCE