Personal Statement for Admission Into Nurse Practitioner Program

Personal Statement Application for the Nurse Practitioner Program at UCSF

I first experienced the duties of a nurse practitioner in WHATEVER, a small mountain village in Nepal.

From 1996-1998, I worked as a Community Health Volunteer with the American Peace Corps. During those two years, I worked with Nepalese women and children, teaching classes on first aid, family planning and nutrition. I also organized immunization clinics, ran a health library, and conducted community needs assessments.

I have always found great fulfillment in healthcare and in being part of people's recoveries. For this reason, I majored in Kinesiology and Biology at the University of Minnesota, even working towards an application to the Physician Assistant program during my last two years. After graduation, I worked as a nursing assistant.

Since then, I have also gained greater familiarity with pharmaceuticals and the managed healthcare system in my present work with the Daiichi Corporation.

Working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, however, has significantly broadened my perspective on health and patient needs.

In the United States, many people equate healthcare with getting treatment when one is sick. However, there is much more to health than the occasional shot, prescription pill or worse, surgery.

As a health worker in Nepal, I was also involved in educating families about the effects of nutrition and illness on a child's growth. I helped children learn about taking care of themselves, pointing the way towards developing healthy habits and lifestyles. Together with the mothers in the village, our group assisted in developing nutritious diets based on the food that was available.

The focus was not just on treating illness, but more important, on maintaining wellness as a whole.

Perhaps no other profession best illustrates this integrated approach to healthcare than the nurse practitioner. After all, a nurse practitioner's duties do not stop at diagnosing and treating individual illnesses. Instead, a nurse practitioner looks at other factors, including nutrition, family, and lifestyle. She works with a broader definition of health, one that involves a patient's psychological and social well being, in addition to the physical.

A nurse practitioner assumes a myriad of roles - nurse, researcher, counselor, teacher and friend. By treating the patient as a whole person, rather than a person with a physical illness, the nurse practitioner is able to provide a patient with a unique standard of care.

As a nurse practitioner, I would like to focus particularly on women, family and school health. My experience in Nepal taught me that very often, educating women is the best and most cost-effective way of ensuring a family's health. A mother who is well-versed on health issues, for example, will be more vigilant about her children's diet and immunizations.

It is also important to reach children early, a lesson I learned while working as a Health and a Physical Education teacher. My students were inner-city 6th to 8th graders who face health risks that their parents did not have to worry about -- such as drugs, alcohol, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Many of them were at elevated health risks due to obesity or malnutrition, an illness that should not exist in the most affluent nation in the world.

These experiences have all contributed to my drive to become a nurse practitioner, a profession that combines my interest in healthcare with my passion in making a positive contribution in people's lives. As a licensed Nurse Practitioner, I hope to work in a clinical urban setting, where I can use my training and experience towards providing better healthcare for families.

I believe that the University of San Francisco's School of Nursing offers the best program towards this goal. First of all, UCSF provides the best foundation for a generalist nursing license. In addition, the program also provides excellent training for students like me, who are interested in focusing on the healthcare needs of women, children and families.

In this program, I hope to further hone the nursing and healthcare skills I already have. If given a chance, I would like to take advantage of your school's programs in primary and specialty care. I look forward to studying about the clinical, technical and ethical aspects of the nurse practitioner profession.