Leadership as a physician. Essay for Chevening scholarship, need suggestions and correction.

Suggestions and corrections will be very beneficial and highly appreciated. thank you

Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home country. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer. (50-500 max)

At times leadership can be affected by birth order. Being the eldest child in maternal and paternal side of my family, all my cousins and siblings are younger than me. Growing up in a close knit family definitely had an impact on my upbringing. To be a good role model was a responsibility that came naturally to me, I had to be dedicated and passionate towards my goals and with strong will power and hard work it became possible to reach towards them. I did well academically and entered medical school where I managed to get an all paid tuition fee scholarship based on my merits. I was extremely proud to have some kind of influence since my younger brother and two of my cousins chose to enter medical school, and are on their way of becoming future doctors.

During medical school was the time my leadership qualities were greatly enhanced. In 5th year I was appointed as the organiser of the monthly motivational speech by well-known speakers mainly in the healthcare sector. I remember during organising one such event where a well-known surgeon was chosen to talk about his journey towards success, cancelled at the last day due to an emergency. Being the organiser I panicked at first, then instead of cancelling I decided to arrange someone from our university. I appointed two students to search for any of our professors who are free and willing to attend the event. Luckily the emergency medicine professor agreed as I requested and explained him my situation. It turned out to be a very entrancing event as he presented several fascinating cases for us. The success was a team effort and I made sure to listen to my team mates opinions, and valued there contribution greatly. I divided the workload depending on everyone's strength and interest. This had led to many successful events under my organisation.

We as physicians practice the art of medicine by coordinating care. It is delivered via a team of caregivers, including nurses, phlebotomist, technicians, pharmacist and housekeepers- not solely physicians. Learning to lead is fundamental to being a successful clinician. But sometime being on the top of the chain automatically leads you to adapt a dysfunctional leadership style; based on giving orders. I have experienced it myself when I started working as a general physician in India. I believe I was able to bring a slight change over time in the working environment and the type of patient care that was being provided. A simple change to a more collaborative and team centred physician leadership style made a huge difference immediately. Asking lots of questions and fewer orders led my team to be involved in the whole process of patient care and provided the best treatment plan possible.

Seeking leadership opportunities and mentors in leadership positions poises us to lead. Chevening will be the ideal chance to polish, enrich and improve my leadership skills that are an essential part of my duty as a Physician.

Aysha, instead of saying that you asked more questions and issued less orders to your subordinates as a doctor, why not try to go for a more inspiring method of presenting that discussion? Right now, it is too technical and cut and dried in approach. There is is no sense of connection with the other workers in the hospital and you come across as being almost dictatorial in style when needed. Try to reword the essay to make yourself sound like an inspiring person who used influence and leadership abilities to get the job done.

For example, when you did not have any speakers, I am sure your team mates were quite apprehensive to approach the doctors to request any of the doctors to be a speaker at your event. How did you influence them to take the chance and talk to the doctors? Did you do this through example or inspirational speech? Try to develop a more interesting approach to that incident. The same goes for the latter part where you discuss the hospital staff. How do you influence them to get the job done during those times when they just wanted to rest and give up already? Show your leadership and influencing abilities are effective during instances when everything seems like an insurmountable mess. That should help the paper become more interesting for the reviewer to read and most likely, create a memorable scenario in relation to your application.