Scholarship / Chevening Leadership Essay - A physician leading a team to save a life [5]

Hello, I will be very thankful if anyone can comment on my essay for the Chevening Scholarship Leaderhip & Influence question.

Prompt:

Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

(minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

values of leadership have been instilled in me early

From a young age, values of leadership have been instilled in me and have been exercised through my experiences in various organizations and committees since junior high school. These experiences help me face challenges in my career as a physician in Indonesia, where we are seen as leaders in the community and in our workplaces.

I worked in a small private hospital in Banten, a neighboring province of Jakarta, as a part of a national internship program for newly-graduated physician. As the physician-on-duty in the wards, I lead a team of 10 nurses and 2 nursing associates per shift, and I analyzed any of the patients' medical problems, to either be solved by myself or be reported to the senior GP or to the consultants. In this hospital, almost all of the nurses working were nurses with a three-year nursing diploma, not Registered Nurses (who are nurses with a four-year nursing degree and professional trainings). These nurses were not capable of performing advanced life support and they were not equipped with adequate knowledge of human physiology, therefore the nurses always look up to the physicians. My leadership was especially needed in emergency situations, where I am expected to make rapid-fire decisions in order to provide optimal life-saving care, regardless of how inexperienced I was. Since I was a new employee and I was younger than several of the nurses, I was initially worried about whether or not they will listen to me, so I tried to get to know them as much as possible in an effort of team-building, establishing that I was a leader that will walk with them, not in front of them.

It was my third month working as a physician in the hospital and my first month in the wards, when a patient's family member called for help because her mother seemed unresponsive. I went to the patient's room and found the patient, an elderly woman, completely unresponsive to pain stimulation and was snoring loudly; red flags. My heart raced as I called the nurses and they rushed in, waiting for my command. They were about to declare a code blue, but I advised against it because the patient was breathing and her pulse was palpable. I instructed for a glucose stick and a suction instead. The patient needed urgent actions and there was no time to call the senior GP for advice on what to do, so I was relieved when my nurses trusted my commands, despite the fact that I was a new physician. The nurses were not confident in using the suction, so I walked them through the steps and performed suctioning together. Meanwhile, the glucose-meter read "Lo", which explained that the patient's loss of consciousness was due to low blood sugar. I asked one of the nurse to administer some intravenous glucose solution, and the patient regained consciousness within minutes. Relief washed over me, as I realized I had succeeded in leading my team to save a patient's life.

Scholarship / Chevening Networking Essay - physician using network to help patients and to develop professionally [3]

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

(minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

networking - fundamental skill in my daily practice

Physicians meet people from various backgrounds everyday and work with many other healthcare services providers in order to provide the best care, therefore I consider networking as a fundamental skill in my daily practice.

After I graduated from medical school and before I started my internship program, I worked as a journal manager of an international medical journal in the field of dermatology and venereology. I was responsible for managing correspondence with our international network of authors, editors, and peer reviewers, in addition to managing the publication of submitted articles. The editors and reviewers I worked with were experts in their fields, and my job taught me to hone my skills in networking with older and more experienced people. During my time there, the journal was looking for a new international editor, and was having problems finding candidates to invite. The year before, I did an elective course in dermatology in Keio University, Japan, where I was mentored by several experts, including a professor who was a leader in the field of autoimmune bullous diseases. I kept in touch with most of the dermatologists I met, and I proposed to our journal's Chief Editor to invite the professor to be an editor. I emailed the professor and we chatted, but unfortunately he declined to be our editor because of his responsibilities in several other journals. But he agreed to be a peer reviewer, which is a great addition to our repertoire because we were short on experts in bullous diseases.

Furthermore, I maintain good relationships with many of the dermatologists I worked with, and use that network to provide the best possible care for my patients. In the healthcare center I work in, many patients come with dermatological complaints but we do not have a dermatologist in our center. I take pictures of patients' complicated lesions and messaged the dermatologists I know to consult and get advice. Through their answers, I am able to identify the appropriate treatment or workup for the patient, and provide information to educate the patients. One of my patients had a metal ring cause a severe rash on her finger and the ring was embedded in the flesh, covered in granulation tissue. Her finger was swollen and there was a risk for tissue death. We had no dermatologists in our hospital, so a swift consultation with a dermatologist I was close with helped greatly in managing the patient, and now I am in the process of writing a case report of the patient with him to be submitted for publication.

As a Chevening scholar, I aim to engage with the alumni network in the medical, public relations, marketing, and creative fields to collaborate in creating reliable and interesting patient education materials, which are direly needed in this day and age. Since there are not many Indonesian physicians who are Chevening scholars, I will assist physicians who are aspiring applicants in preparing their applications and help open their horizons on higher education in the UK.