About Me

I am a Stanford-trained anesthesiologist and a physician essay coach. As a third year medical school, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine matching at Stanford. In fact, I was planning to stay for my anesthesia residency at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, where I had been happily training for nearly eight years at their combined BA/MD program. The allure of training at a more prestigious academic institution was appealing, but the odds were not in my favor:

• My USMLE Step score was right at the cutoff for the most competitive anesthesia residencies.

• My grades were above average, but did not meet the cutoff for AOA (prestigious medical honor society that some programs use to screen and rank applicants).

• I had some research experience but no major publications.

• I do not have any physicians in my family, so whatever advice I received was from faculty mentors.

So here’s how I ended up dreaming about Stanford: My husband had lived on the West Coast and wanted to move back West. I remember looking at him aghast, “Do you realize how impossibly difficult it would be for me to match in California as a non-California resident? Especially because I don’t even have good scores?” Nevertheless, I focused on programs on the West Coast, which are among the most competitive in the country.

I diligently worked on my personal statement draft for two months. Once I was satisfied, I sent a copy to the chairman of anesthesia at my medical school and scheduled a meeting to solicit feedback. In his South African accent, he said, “I’ve seen this same boring essay a thousand times and couldn’t make it past your first paragraph. If you want people to read your personal statement, you have to make it personal.”

I was horrified because I had never received such harsh feedback on my writing in a professional setting. Since my initial approach was a failure, I decided to radically change my approach and go “all in” on his advice. He had told me to “make it personal,” so I thought, I am going intensely personal. Worst case scenario, he’ll tell me I overcorrected, and I can always pull back and make it more generic.

My revision included stories that are so personal and difficult to tell, that some close friends in my life do not know this about me, and I cannot share the details of those stories in this public format. In brief, those experiences motivated me to work full time during college and help victims of violent crimes secure court-issued orders of protection. Later, in medical school, I influenced national healthcare policy in the area of healthcare and violence. The culmination of these experiences reinforced my commitment to help others during moments of crisis, a goal that aligned with the field of anesthesia.

I met with my Chair again to discuss my revision. I felt so uncomfortable about sharing a deeply intimate and painful story with my Chair of anesthesia. Certainly, he would recommend reining in my “oversharing.” I held my breath as he read to the bottom of the paper (great sign!). He looked up and simply said, “Yes, this is perfect. You can submit this as is.” I was shocked that he thought my personal stories were appropriate to share and was so relieved that my personal statement was ready for submission.

After ERAS opened, the anesthesia interview invitations started to come, including from Stanford, all three Harvard programs, UCSF, UCLA, Yale, Columbia, Duke, UPenn, University of Washington, Dartmouth, OHSU, Emory, NYU, Mount Sinai, and Johns Hopkins.

Some of you may think that’s where the story ends: “Great - so a good personal statement got her the interview.” However, the impact of the personal statement reaches beyond the interview invitation. Once I was on the interview trail, I realized how heavily my personal statement influenced my interviews.

Many of my interviews didn’t start with the usual questions like:

• “Tell me about yourself.”

• “Why do you want to become an anesthesiologist?”

• “Why do you want to train here?”

Instead, my interviewers started by saying, “I read your personal statement and I want to tell you my story.” They recognized a part of themselves in my stories, which in turn inspired them to share their own stories with me: One told me how they had recently moved their family across state lines because their adolescent child had developed substance use disorder and they hoped a new environment would keep them in remission. Another shared the effects of having his mother die of cancer when he was a child. A third spoke about recently divorcing an abusive partner.

My personal statement gave me an unexpected gift. It transformed the interview hierarchy of “I am the interviewer and you are the applicant” into “Let’s enjoy a few moments of authentic human connection.” By the end of my interview, I felt emotionally connected and bonded to my interviewers, like I would feel with friends.

If you are able to write a strong personal statement that sets you up to have deeply meaningful interviews, by this point in the selection process, you will have a key unfair advantage. To your interviewers, you will be more than just another applicant to evaluate and score. You will be someone they admire, respect, trust, and want to mentor. 

Let's take a peek behind the scenes so you can understand how a rank order list is built after your interview. Especially for those of you applying to larger programs, you will be meeting with only a fraction of the entire admissions committee. After the interviews, the admissions committee will convene, project your face up on a screen, and collectively decide your position on their rank order list. Your interviewers will excitedly share your stories with the rest of the committee to influence your rank order position. Every other person in that room listening to those stories will then see images of this heroic version of you in their minds.

In the weeks leading up to my rank order list submission, programs recruited me in phone and email communications using strongly suggestive language that I was ranked to match. On Match Day, I matched at my first choice, Stanford anesthesia. In my Stanford anesthesia class of eight categorical residents, my classmates had graduated from the following medical schools: One from Stanford, two from Harvard, one from UCSF, one from UCLA, one from Johns Hopkins, and one from Columbia. And then there was me, from SUNY Stony Brook.

Knowing how transformative my personal statement had been in my own journey, I excitedly shared what I had learned with medical students rotating with me on their anesthesia rotation. In my first year as an assistant professor of anesthesia, three of my medical students whom I had coached on their personal statements matched at Harvard MGH - two in anesthesia and one in orthopedic surgery. My passion project grew into a business and I now work with medical and dental applicants from across the country to achieve their dreams.

Work with me, and I’ll show you how to identify and organize your best stories to build a high yield, high impact personal statement. The goal of your personal statement is to set yourself up for Match Day success.

Medical Training

• M.D. from Stony Brook School of Medicine

• Anesthesia Residency at Stanford School of Medicine

• Simulation and Medical Education Fellowship at Stanford School of Medicine

Teaching Awards

• Stanford School of Medicine Arnold P. Gold Humanism and Excellence in Teaching Award

• Stanford Department of Anesthesia Senior Resident Teaching Scholar

• Stanford Department of Anesthesia Resident of the Year

• Dartmouth Department of Anesthesia Teacher of the Year

Training in Medical Education

• Instructor Training at the Harvard Center for Medical Simulation

• Teaching Workshops at the Stanford Faculty Development Center

Communication Expertise

• Trained and served as a Communications Consultant at Northern California Kaiser Permanente and coached physicians across all specialties to improve their communication skills.

Medical Prose:

• Essay on organ procurement published in JAMA’s creative writing section “A Piece of My Mind.”

• Delivered a public reading of my essay for the Stanford Medicine Pegasus Writers Group.

Book Chapter:

• Wen, L., & Trockel, M. (2019). Mindfulness. The Art and Science of Physician Wellbeing: A Handbook for Physicians and Trainees, 195-208.

Peer Reviewed Publications:

• Schroeck, H., Whitty, M. A., Hatton, B., Martinez-Camblor, P., Wen, L., & Taenzer, A. H. (2024). Team Relations and Role Perceptions During Anesthesia Crisis Management in Magnetic-Resonance Imaging Settings: A Mixed Methods Exploration. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 50(5), 308-317.

• Schroeck, H., Hatton, B., Martinez-Camblor, P., Whitty, M. A., Wen, L., & Taenzer, A. H. (2024). Effect of Interprofessional Crisis Simulation Training in a Non-Operating Room Anesthesia Setting on Team Coordination: A Mixed Methods Study. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

• Trockel, M. T., Menon, N. K., Makowski, M. S., Wen, L. Y., Roberts, R., Bohman, B. D., & Shanafelt, T. D. (2023, January). Impact: evaluation of a controlled organizational intervention using influential peers to promote professional fulfillment. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 98, No. 1, pp. 75-87). Elsevier.

• Wen, L. Y., & Howard, S. K. (2017). Perioperative ACLS/cognitive aids in resuscitation. International Anesthesiology Clinics, 55(3), 4-18.

• Wen, L., Sweeney, T. E., Welton, L., Trockel, M., & Katznelson, L. (2017). Encouraging mindfulness in medical house staff via smartphone app: a pilot study. Academic psychiatry, 41, 646-650.

• Wen, L. Y., & Howard, S. K. (2014). Value of expert systems, quick reference guides and other cognitive aids. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology, 27(6), 643-648.