CAAPID Personal Statement Sample, Iranian

I became a dentist in my native Iran, and I am now a citizen of the USA making a home with my family in Southern California alongside my Iranian American husband. I hope to be selected to complete an Advanced Standing Program for International Dentists, so that I will be able to practice multicultural and multilingual dentistry here in southern California for many decades to come. I look forward to having many Middle Eastern patients, in Arabic, Farsi, and English, enriching our community through the celebration of diversity, and organizing to support its most vulnerable members. 

A CAAPID applicant from Iran shares a proud moment with her daughter at a dental clinic.

My husband – a civil engineer - was raised in the USA and we moved together to Dubai, not long after our wedding, where he accepted a job offer. I started my own dental clinic in Dubai shortly thereafter, which I went on to operate for 16 years, until we decided to move back to America, now our permanent home since June of 2018. For the past year-and-a-half, I have been shadowing and assisting with patient management in a local dental clinic. I have been learning a great deal from my American mentor, Dr, ____ ____, in Marina del Rey, CA, who I have now been shadowing for a total of 576 hours. I also learned all that I could at every opportunity in Dubai. While Dubai is more advanced in my Dentistry than my native Iran, it still lags the state-of-the-art Dentistry as practiced in the US. Dr. ____ has been helping to bring me up to date with respect to the current forefront: of terminology, techniques, etc. I have been most enjoying the priceless opportunity of observing an expert up close performing a broad variety of dental procedures. 

A compassionate Iranian dentist shares a joyful moment with a young patient, reflecting the dedication and empathy she plans to highlight in her CAAPID personal statement.

My most important inspiration will always be my mother. I watched my mom work tirelessly as a high school Biology teacher in Iran, where she faced a constant, uphill, battle, throughout her career, militating against a brutal regime and its administration, standing up for greater individual freedoms, for herself and her students. I originally found myself drawn to art, painting, and sculpture, inspired by my father who was skilled in both. I lost my mom not long before I graduated from dental school and I would spend the next couple of years mourning her, as I served the dental needs of the elderly in nursing homes in Tehran, all of them underserved. Not much later, I will have a daughter with whom I am as close as I was to my mother. My daughter is now sixteen and plans to become a dentist. When she first started learning Spanish, she told me it was because she simply loved the language. Now, however, nearing fluency, she has found increasing purpose for this great passion, helping the underserved as a dentist in California. 

Aspiring dentist from Iran, a CAAPID applicant, shares a joyful moment with her daughter embodying her passion for the International Dentist Program.

I will always be thankful for the experience of long hours in nursing homes, providing oral health care to the elderly, cultivating my compassion intensively for two solid years. I came to appreciate how even tiny amounts of dental care more fully can make a particularly significant difference in one’s life, especially for the elderly. After another 6 years serving in some of Tehran’s finest clinics, I married my spouse and moved with him to Dubai where he was able to advance his career as a civil engineer. I practiced as a dental surgeon in Dubai in my own office from 2002 until 2018. I take pride in the fact that involvement in a multi-cultured society like Dubai is associated with gains in cognitive ability, verbal skills, and critical thinking. The long journey of being an expert female dentist was a great challenge that improved my professional abilities and intellectual capabilities on personal as well as professional levels. I treasure the fact that for 16 years I was able to receive constructive feedback from patients from a broad variety of cultural and national backgrounds, from all levels of society. I attended many innovative trainings and hands-on courses in implants, as well as laser and cosmetic dentistry – in Arabic as well as English. I also participated in a voluntary program designed to help the underserved, mostly the large population of foreign nationals working in Dubai. 

The move from the Middle East to the United States was accompanied by many challenges but we have never regretted making the transition, especially for the sake of our daughter, bound for dental school. Her mother’s selection to an Advanced Standing Program for International Dentists would be a great inspiration for her as well as me. My husband could not be more supportive of his daughter as well as her mother.  

One year ago, I met Dr. ____ ____ the Founder of Oral Disability Rescue (ODR), a non-profit organization with which I have been volunteering since that time. I now serve as a supervisor of other volunteers, pre-dental students from UCI, as we visit nursing homes to access the oral health of patients and to train staff to do so as well, making appropriate referrals, and assisting residents in finding a local mobile dentist to visit them at least 2-3 times per year. I also volunteer at Loma Linda University Medical Center Hospital helping to ease anxious and stressed patients and their families.  

Thank you for considering my application. 

CAAPID Personal Statement Sample, Iranian