Work experience- caring for a relative

**hannah9292** · 19-08-2012, 10:28 PM

I am planning to apply for graduate medicine. I have quite a lot of volunteering so far as work experience but probably the experience that i learn most from was caring for my terminally ill aunt for the past 4 years. I wasn't her main carer but I shared her caring with my mum. I was just wondering how much about this I should write in my personal statement. I don't want to seem like I am asking for sympathy and also I don't know how much this experience is worth.

Thanks

**jcak** · 19-08-2012, 10:44 PM

First off, I want to offer my condolences, that's never a nice situation to be in. I had a similar situation caring for my grandfather when he had dementia before he went into a care home.

To a medical school, this sort of experience can be gold dust. Not only have you had a long term commitment to a caring role, which is what most expressly ask for in their selection criteria, but you have seen more from the patients side than the medical side. As long as you can say what you've taken from this, it should be looked upon much more favourably than, for example, volunteering weekly in a hospice for those four years.

What you've gone through is a hard task which a lot of people couldn't stomach, and after all this you still want to study medicine. That's commendable. Rather than concentrating your entire statement on this though, make sure you paint a small picture of what it was like, but focus on what you learnt from this. The most important part of this for your application is how you improved your aunt's quality of life and what you learnt from this. Try not to make it sound as if it's your main reason for wanting to study medicine (unless, of course, it is the initial reason you wanted to).

Good luck in your application!

P.S. I'm not sure the BMAT forum is the best place for this post.

**hannah9292** · 21-08-2012, 02:45 PM

Thank you so much for your help. I now have a bit more of an idea on how to start my personal statement.
Clearly doing the BMAT is all that is on my mind at the moment so I posted in here :S I see that you are a 2013 GEP applicant as well, any idea where you are applying as of yet?

**jcak** · 21-08-2012, 03:54 PM

Haha, at least that means you're planning for your BMAT which can only be a good thing! My A levels let me down (BBC) so my choices were narrowed down immediately, also getting 620 on DA with an average of 700 in my UKCAT took a couple of options away. Not doing GAMSAT/BMAT means I've only got 4 places I can apply to where I'll pass the criteria: Barts, Warwick, Soton and Newcastle. Luckily they were half uni's I would apply to even if I did get higher grades!

How about you? I'm guessing Oxford is in there if you're taking the BMAT at GEP level?