Master of Bioethics and Health Law postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

A woman came to the reception desk at the GP surgery where I work and asked, quite calmly, for a list of everyone who had looked at her medical record in the past year. She was not angry. She had moved from another area and wanted to know how far her information travelled. I explained how to make a subject access request, then spent the afternoon wondering what the list would mean to her once she had it. A name and a date say little about whether a reading of her notes was justified. That gap between what the law requires and what a person actually wants to understand is the reason I am applying for postgraduate study in bioethics and health law.

I studied Philosophy at undergraduate level, graduating with a 2:1. My strongest modules were in moral and political philosophy, and I took an optional course in applied ethics that introduced me to Beauchamp and Childress's four principles. I found the framework useful for organising a problem but less helpful when the principles pulled in different directions, which led me to Onora O'Neill's Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. Her argument that an individualistic idea of autonomy cannot carry all the weight medicine places on it, and that institutions need to earn trust rather than simply gather consent, shaped how I approached my dissertation.

That dissertation examined the move to deemed consent for organ donation in England in 2020. I asked whether a system in which silence counts as agreement can still be described as respecting autonomy. I read the parliamentary debates, public guidance and philosophical work on presumed consent, and argued that the policy is most defensible when it is understood as a change in default rather than a claim about what individuals have actually chosen, and that its legitimacy depends heavily on families and the public being well informed. My supervisor pushed me on the role of the family veto in practice, and the section I rewrote in response became the strongest part of the work. It also showed me how little I knew about the legal side, and that is a large part of why I want a combined course rather than further philosophy alone.

I have tried to begin closing that gap. I have read about Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board and the shift it marked towards asking what a reasonable patient would want to know, rather than what a responsible body of doctors would tell them. Reading the judgment alongside my philosophy notes was the first time I saw a court working through a question I had previously met only as a seminar topic.

My job has given me a practical sense of how these ideas meet ordinary routines. I have been a receptionist for two years, handling appointment bookings, repeat prescription queries and requests for records. I follow confidentiality procedures carefully and I am often the person who explains to patients why I cannot discuss a relative's care without their permission. I do not make clinical decisions, but I see daily how much depends on clear explanation and on patients feeling that the system is acting in good faith.

Outside work I play cornet in a local brass band, which has taught me the discipline of regular practice and of fitting my part around others. Each Saturday I also drive an elderly neighbour to the supermarket and help her with her post. It is simple, but it has made me attentive to how forms and letters can confuse people who are entirely capable of deciding things for themselves.

I would bring to postgraduate study a sound grounding in ethical argument, experience of writing a sustained piece of research, and a working familiarity with how consent and confidentiality operate at the front desk of a health service. I hope to develop the legal knowledge to test my philosophical arguments properly, and eventually to work on policy or ethics guidance where both disciplines are needed.