Personal profile

Hi, I am Sarwar Ibn Kaiser. I am from Toronto, Ontario.

I am an emerging Physician Assistant; currently enrolled in the Physician Assistant Professional Degree Program in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Healthcare background: I am an International medical graduate, graduated from medical school in 2009. I have completed my clinical rotation in 2010 and worked in several medical clinics on that period. During my clinical rotation, I had to do various works in each Department. When I worked in Medicine, every morning I had to follow-up each patient of my ward. Then I had to present my case to the professors and complete their orders. In Night shifts, I was the only person who had to manage the whole ward. I did same thing in the other departments. In addition to this, I assisted professors and my seniors in various surgeries and attended normal vaginal deliveries.

I Immigrated to Canada in January, 2011 and started to search a position for myself in the Canadian health care system. To pursue my goal, I started diploma in Opticianry at Seneca College in September, 2012 and became a Registered Student Optician under College of Opticians of Ontario. I worked with two Optometrists in that period. I helped in patient preparation by taking auto-refractometer and tonometer readings. I also had to dispense eyeglasses and contact lenses under Optician supervision.

As a Physician Assistant, I have to work as a physician extender. I have to deal with some challenging situations. Also, I have to be a good model for the future PA’s. I think my health-care backgrounds gave me a solid base to be an effective Physician Assistant in the future.

Academic Background: MBBS from North-East Medical College under school of Medicine at Shahjalal University of Science and technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. I also studied at the Seneca College in the Diploma in Opticianry.

Career Goals: 

• To become a professional, respected, most competent and compassionate physician assistant.·        
• To be a life-ling learner and a highly educated PA.·       
• To build an excellent relationship with my patients and my supervising Physician.·        
• I want to be the best advocate for the PA profession in Canada.·        
• I am mostly interested in internal medicine. Although I am looking forward to determining my ultimate career goals through second year clinical rotations.·        
• I also have a strong desire to volunteer for underserved populations around the world especially my back home where so many peoples are suffering every day.·       
• Finally, I want to develop myself as an individual and become the person I always envisioned I would be through professional and spiritual ways. 

Myself as a Learner:  I consider myself as a strong learner in the medical field. I also do have some strengths and some weakness. My academic and healthcare backgrounds are helping me a lot in all learning experiences.

My Strength:  

·        Active listening skills. I do believe in listen and learn strategy.
·        Organization skills. I love to study in an organized way. I like to make a routine first and try to follow the routine.
·        I love problem solving, which will definitely help me in the future.
·        I always try to meet all the deadlines.
·        I welcome the feedback from my instructors and peers.


My areas of growth

•  I need to work on my logical argumentative skills. 
•  Sometimes it is hard for me to think "outside of the box”. I need to connect my thinking ability to learning ability
•  Procrastination. I need to work on this thing as early as possible.

  

Learning Style and Strategy:  I used two online assessment systems to determine my learning style. Those are:

Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire by Barbara A. Soloman and Richard M. Felder

According to this assessment, I am mostly a reflective learner. I prefer to think about anything quietly first, then go through the whole thing, which suits me perfectly. I also like to study alone, which also defined me as a reflective learner. But I need to acquire some attributes of active learners. I shouldn't memorize and read all the time; I also need to make some summaries of the class notes which will help me before the exams.

Next, I am fairly well balanced between sensing and intuitive learners. But, I think that, I mostly belong to sensing learner type. I do have some attributes of intuitive learners as I sometimes prefer discovering possibilities but most of the time, I don’t like any complications in my life and also in my study. I also prefer to learn about new concepts like intuitive learners; on the other hand, I am more practical like sensing learners.

Thirdly, I am also well balanced between visual and verbal category. I am completely agreed with the assessment. However, I don’t like to use pictures or diagrams for better understanding or explanation.

Finally, the assessment defined me as a sequential learner. But I think I am also well balanced between these two characters. Sometimes I like to follow all the steps to study something, however sometimes I like to solve some complex subjects in an innovative way. I also like to skim through the whole chapter first before starts studying this subject which is an important character which can be define me as a global learner

The VARK Questionnaire

According to this assessment tool, I have a strong preference for learning by Reading and Writing. I know the reason behind it.

I completed my most of the studies in Bangladesh where the preferences are mostly given on reading and writing. So, I also like to learn by Write out the words again and again, read my notes silently, or by rewriting the ideas in my way. I also like to make my own invented mnemonics which helped me a lot in the past.

Next, the assessment also described me as a kinesthetic learner. This means, I like to use all my senses - sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing during my learning process. I did not know that before the assessment. But I am somehow able to define me as a kinesthetic learner. For example I always like to practice before the OSCE; I also like to do some practical exams rather than the typical written exams.

Learning Context: I am fairly new to the world of online learning. But so far, I think online learning is the future of the learning world. I am able to do all my household works, give some time to my wife and prepare all my assignments at the same time. This is almost impossible in the face to face learning. Online learning technology will grow day by day and some glitches of online learning will also be diminished in the future. I am always a reflective learner, so I am pretty much happy with the online learning.

Conclusion: As an emerging PA, I want to accomplish all my career goals as early as possible.I am becoming spiritual learner day by day, and I want to spend some of the valuable moments of the life to discover myself and to find out the meaning of the relationship between me and this beautiful world