How valuable is this experience for a letter of intent?

[OilersFan22]

Hey all,

Happy Friday the 13th. I would like to know all of your opinions on this recent clinical experience.

I am working in the two largest hospitals in my city. I have worked on a thoracic surgical unit in our university hospital (80 hours) and a general internal medicine unit at the university hospital and another larger hospital (220 hours).

My position requires me to shadow front line healthcare workers as they deliver services to patients and to collect quantitative data on all actions, including documentation, med admin and prep, ASK, IV start and management, etc. I spend all of my time in unit. I shadow registered nurses, licensed nurses, nursing attendants, social workers, and physiotherapists. While there are often internists and residents present, I have only limited interaction with them directly but I documented all healthcare worker interactions with them.

I have been exposed to a wide variety of situations, a few of which I will mention here. We have had many total compassion care patients who eventually passed away, including when I was on shift. These were from metastatic cancers, organ and eventual system failure, and ALS. I was on shift during a medical emergency when a patient was crashing and the medical emergency was notified over intercom. Then, the patient went into code blue and the code blue specialists were alerted and rapidly arrived, nearly running. The patient was resuscitated and sent to ICU.

I learned about superbugs, most of which had infiltrated our medical units. I saw some very diverse patients - Huntingtons Disease, delirium, HIV encephalopathy, Crohns with malnutrition, alcohol withdrawals, whipples, pneumonia, and so on. Many of the patients in medicine units are very sick.

I learned about many inefficiencies in the system, such as patients living in the hospital because there are no placement facilities available. Or the financial mazes that hospital social workers have to navigate through to discharge patients to proper facilities.

I will update this more later today. Please let me know! I'm on a waitlist so I'm really hoping to get off of it since it's my target school.

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[dmf2682]

Unimpressed. Did you actually get to work with patients?

 

[alerk323]

haha harsh, but anyway, put it on, it sounds good (although sum it up more). It's my understanding that the only real value of the letter of intent is the sentence of "i will go to your school no matter what if accepted please pretty please accept me". The rest just fills some of the page.

 

[pfaction]

I'll second dmf. Sounds like an interesting experience, but did you do anything with them.

 

[OilersFan22]

Of course I did not directly work with the patients as I am not trained to do so. Neither are the vast majority of other premeds. Nice try though.


Sent from my HTC using SDN Mobile

 

[alerk323]

everyone's gettin a big feisty. Why does it matter if he worked with the patients directly? It's a letter of intent not a clinical experience on the AMCAS primary. I wrote a letter of intent a while back and included where I was working at the time, which was market research company that exposed me to healthcare related issues but did not put me in direct contact with patients.

besides, it sounds like a clinical experience anyway based on the whole, can you smell patients, thing

 

[dmf2682]

Of course I did not directly work with the patients as I am not trained to do so. Neither are the vast majority of other premeds. Nice try though.


Sent from my HTC using SDN Mobile

Not sure what you mean by nice try. Here's my put. If you can say that you got something really meaningful out of it that you were lacking in your original application it might help you. I would also dispute your other statement. Premeds can work with patients if you know where to look.

 

[otggwmfs]

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[Finches]

Purpose of intent letters are to say "If accepted, I will definitely attend." Getting that point across is its sole value, unless you have significant updates to consolidate your candidacy (e.g. recent publications or awards).

What you "saw" or "were exposed to" isn't unique, since any volunteer at an ER or busy community clinic can say the same. Describing them in detail as you did would be superflous. I understand that you want your intent letter to sound significant, but trite details are not the way to go.