Show Your Capacity

Can MEDS Framework

Understanding the domains of this framework can help you see what kind of competencies and skills medical schools are looking for in applicants. Let’s look at the domains of the Can MEDS framework and highlight ways to fill in your application to show your capacity in each of these areas.

Professionalism: Including your work experience in any field is important but you need to show the roles which demonstrate team work and your ability to serve others. If you’ve been employed in a lab, a clinic or research institute and you have reference letters that highlight your punctuality and professional behavior, this will work great for you. You can also include extracurricular activities that demonstrate your commitment to social causes or the fact that you can work with different kinds of people in informal environments.

Good Communicator

Volunteer Work

Have you engaged in an extracurricular activity or volunteer work where you handled a situation that involved conflict, errors or vulnerabilities. Include this to demonstrate your communication skills. Describe how you use your good communication skills to help the situation. You need to show your ability to think quickly, adapt to situations and be flexible. If you have any extracurricular activities that show your involvement in group leadership roles, make sure you include them. Don’t leave out any volunteering you did in a clinical setting or civil society.

Think about experiences that help you to demonstrate empathy and care for other human beings. For instance, you can include a trip that you made to a different community and how you empathized with the people you met which inspired you to do something about their situation. You need to show that you can easily identify with the struggles and challenges that other people are experiencing rather than just showing pity in your personal statement.

Managerial Competencies

Extracurricular Activities

Extracurricular Volunteer Activities

Collaborator: Do you have any extracurricular activities that you did in groups, teams or partnerships? Use them to show you are a good collaborator. For instance, you may have worked in a lab and handled tasks that require critical thinking or a qualitative research project that needed you to interact with others. Do not exclude any work experience that involves teams even if it’s in a professional environment.

Managerial Competencies: You can use extracurricular activities to demonstrate your managerial competencies. For instance, include any volunteering you did that shows good time management, creative problem solving, working under stress and commitment. You can state the fact that you were involved in a community project while pursuing your university degree.

Your commitment level may be measured in terms of time, duration or even contributing to initiating a group. Medical schools are also looking for well-roundedness when reviewing extracurricular activities so don’t feel shy to include those activities that show rare interests and skills.

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