What is your top tip for medicine personal statements?

Personal statements are all about demonstrating your understanding of what skills are required for the university course. In medicine, the interviewer wants to see you understand the key qualities of a doctor.... empathathetic, decisive, approachable, confident, compassionate... The best was to demonstrate this is through work experience and volunteering. So, what volunteering/work experience have you done for medicine? The important thing about the work experience/volunteering is that you REFLECT on what you have learnt from the experiences. A good doctor is reflective about what they've learnt in good/bad situations so it's a really good skill to demonstrate early on. Plus, in your career and med school you have to do a lot of reflections, so it's a really good skill to get in to. FOR EXAMPLE, say you have volunteered at a nursing home for 3 months. Instead of spending a long time talking about what your duties were at the nursing home (which they don't care about much), cut straight to what YOU LEARNT/REFLECTED FROM THE EXPERIENCE. E.g. 'from spending Sunday afternoons playing chess with elderley residents of a care home, I REFLECTED how one on one interaction and social stimulation has a big impact on the mood of the residents, and improves concentration and fluency of speech'. Through one small sentence, you can demostrate insightfulness, compassion and intelligence, which are all tick boxes for medicine!