Professional Disclosure in your Personal Statement

[hygytsw]

Hi all,

I am applying to Denver's forensic psychology MA program. One of their essay prompts requests the following: Describe someone you know who has engaged in behavior of which you disapprove. How has this behavior affected your view of this person? How has your relationship with this person changed? How do you understand your reactions?

I am tempted to write an essay about a patient I have worked with (without disclosing their name, age, crime, HIPPA type violations), but I am worried this will come across as unprofessional. I have not included anything about patients in my other essays but this prompt seems to be looking for a level of self/professional disclosure that I have not seen in other applications, so I am unsure of how to proceed.

Does anyone have experience with essays like this? AND: If I do not write about a patient, would it be unprofessional to write about a coworker who I discovered have multiple DUIs, and how that affected my view of their work and professional judgement?

 

Thanks!

Edited November 20, 2017 by hygytsw

[TakeruK]

Perhaps someone in the field can correct me if I'm wrong, but this does not sound like a question that expects you to reveal details about your patients and i doesn't sound like a test of whether or not you can follow HIPPA.

Instead, this reads very very much like one of those lists of standard interview questions that is used to assess your behaviour and how you interact with others. For example, questions like, "Describe a time where you had a conflict with someone. How did you resolve it?" or "Describe a time where you disagreed with your superior. How did you proceed?"

Perhaps for your specific program, they are asking this question to see how you would interact with people in your department. Or to test if you can remain impartial/professional in your work if you know some details about their personal life. Or maybe they didn't really think about the questions they are asking and just pulled them from some list.

In any case, I don't think you need to tell them who the person is and/or how you know the person if it is not relevant to how you answer the rest of the questions. You don't have to tell them that this person is a coworker or a patient. If it helps, you can just change the identity of the person you're writing about (both to protect their privacy and to make your story more anonymous). Write about your coworker/patient as if they were an acquaintance or friend of a friend or something like that.

However, if this question does have special meaning in your field and/or there's a specific strategy to this type of question in your field, I'd defer to those in your field. But if this is one of those generic job interview questions, then I'd recommend doing the above.

[Piagetsky]

This is totally off topic, but I wouldn't want you to include it in your application erroneously.  It's HIPAA (health information portability accountability act).

[MarineBluePsy]

I wouldn't answer this prompt by discussing a patient even if you are careful to avoid a HIPAA violation.  I would instead opt for a circumstance involving a friend or acquaintance, but still leave out identifying details.