Being in a leadership position in Nigeria and to fight diseases

leaders and influencers in your country

Growing up in Nigeria and striving to meet up with the rest of the world in health care has pushed me to always want to create a positive change in my country. Last year, I volunteered to work with Delta State Action Committee on HIV/AIDs during my one year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). As the group leader, I was charged with the responsibilities of organizing my team members to carry out HIV testing and counselling, education of patients and referrals to the nearest hospitals for confirmed ones. I had to assign different duties like picking of location, applying for work materials and logistics needed to get the work done and at the end of the exercise I make my reports and send it down to the state office. The most challenging aspect was to get people to come out as a lot of people are afraid to know their status. To achieve our aim, I started a door to door sensitization campaign to enlighten them on the benefits of knowing their status; this encouraged them to come out to get checked. My team and I through sheer hard work and dedication was able to get the job done at the end of the year.

My leadership and influencing skills can be clearly seen also when I was posted to work in a rural govt hospital, I was in charge of the pharmacy as the only pharmacists and worked with pharmacy technicians assigned to me. i plan the day to day running of the pharmacy, requisition of drugs from the central medical store and managing of my inventories to avoid drugs expiration. I assign duties to my team while overseeing the work done.

In my current job as a senior staff, I am faced daily with challenging situations both from my patients and colleagues and I always try to find solutions to them using my past experiences to positively influence intern pharmacists and technician who are under my charge. For instance, when I first resumed working here, I met a system with so many variances at the end of the stock take. I traced the problem to non posting out of drugs in the electronic medical records (EMR) after it has been physically dispensed. I introduced immediate posting out of medication before dispensing and we noticed positive change at the next stock take.

In my opinion, you should use more transitional phrases and pay attention to sentence starts.
There is your mistake: I plan the day

Ugwu, you do not need several examples of leadership and influencing. You need only one effective example of these traits. So the last 2 examples regarding handling pharmacists and as a senior staff should be removed from the essay. These are two weak examples because you did mostly paperwork and backroom activities that do not really require strong leadership and influencing skills. However, the community service that you did is tremendously relevant and applicable to the requirements of the prompt.

Expand the discussion to cover the method by which you led the team to develop the door sensitization campaign. What obstacles did the program face at the start and how did you overcome it? For example, did you have uncooperative team members? Or perhaps community members who did not wish to participate in the program? How did you use your influencing skills to change their minds, promote the program, and lead the team towards its successful implementation?

As the prompt explains, you need to offer evidence of how you embody leadership and influencing traits. Based on what you have written, it is the Delta Action Committee participation as a member of the NYSC that best fits the prompt requirements. That is why you have to focus on polishing that aspect of your volunteer service rather than presenting weak leadership skills in the hopes of strengthening your essay. Use the strongest aspect of your application and drive that point home. It has the potential to prove your leadership and ability skills so don't confuse the presentation.

In order to be a strong candidate, you need to make sure that you present your strongest leadership and influencing aspects. When you write 2 additional weak leadership and influencing examples, it negates the strong opening example that you gave. That is why the focus should be on no more than 500 words that strengthen your community service skills in relation to the HIV/AIDS program.