Born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, where I also completed medical school, I am thankful that I could spend an extended time growing up in Libya and the UAE, enhancing my appreciation for diversity. Now a US citizen and a faculty at LAC-USC Medical Center, working on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19, I appreciate how nutrition plays a vital role in boosting our immunity. The most common health problems arise from a root cause of obesity, which goes back to unhealthy food choices. As a healthcare professional, I find myself responsible and committed to learning evidence-based approaches to accelerate the improvement in the health of our patients. I look forward to joining your fellowship program in clinical nutrition to acquire the unique knowledge and skills I can incorporate into my future practice.
Increasingly, throughout my career, I have had a particular interest in treating my patients holistically, and clinical nutrition is central to the practice of holistic medicine. I consider the amount of time spent covering the subject of food in medical school to be insufficient; I hope to contribute in the future to giving nutrition information more prominent in medical school and residency programs. Thus, I look forward to developing my advanced awareness of the importance of nutrition to maintain optimal health. I want to become a leader in this field in the future, providing exemplary teaching guidance to new generations of students. Serving as a teaching faculty for the past five years has enabled me to gain additional skills and expertise in teaching. What I hope to learn in your fellowship program in Clinical Nutrition will complement what I have already learned, enable, and inspire me in my quest for excellence as a teacher, and incorporate vital information about clinical nutrition into our medical school curriculums.
I have served as a lead hospitalist in patient safety and a transplant hepatology fellow. This has taught me how to work exceptionally well as a multidisciplinary team member and allowed me to develop my leadership skills, navigating effectively between team members. This skill will enable me to deal with the complexity of caring for patients in obesity medicine with its numerous related comorbidities.
My goal during my fellowship is to learn and teach nutrition-centered patient care to help uplift our patients mentally and emotionally. Thank you for considering my application to your competitive fellowship program in clinical nutrition at UX.
Fellowship Clinical Nutrition Personal Statement