Simple Question About Clinical Experience

[K015h1k]

hey guys, i've got a pretty dumb question. i go to Ohio State University and i was talking to one of my buddies who is an undergraduate pre-med. i told him that i was planning on getting some clinical experience under my belt this year. he says to me, "dude you're lucky, i want to but undergrads can't". this got me wondering what the heck is clinical experience exactly!?!? have i been wrong to assume that it is just doing some hands on stuff at a hospital? like working as an STNA. if that is the case, i don't see how undergrads CAN'T participate in clinical experience. doesn't make sense.

- anyways, can someone please give me a few examples of great clinical experience/positions that you are aware of.
- also, i've got an STNA license. however, i do have a bad back, so i can't really do some of the heavy lifting that those guys do. does anyone know how else i can really get involved, clinical experience wise? or any ideas how i can use my STNA license as an advantage to get involved?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[AkGrown84]

Undergrads can certainly get clinical experience. Maybe a hospital he's spoken to doesn't like undergrads in a certain program?! Either way, there are numerous ways in which to get some clinical experience. I've been working as a scribe in my local ER for the past 2 years, and I was told by multiple people in multiple interviews that it was one of the best clinical experiences you could have because it was a direct connection to the physicians and the patient. Essentially, it's counted as clinical, but is basically super-shadowing with responsibilities (ie: the chart documentation).

Other clinical experiences include things like volunteering at a homeless shelter counseling on proper foot care, dental care, nutrition, etc. EMT, which typically only takes a class and some training is also a good option (depends on the "level" of EMT you want-it varies, and I am not very educated on it!). Also, some shadowing experiences can cross over to some clinical. Once I was comfortable shadowing the OB/Gyn (she was my personal OB/Gyn for the last 10 years and delivered my 4 kids, so we had a bit of a history as well), she had me go in after the nurse and before her. I'd typically ask about how they're feeling, if they have any concerns, go over things to look out for/things to expect, etc. If they were pregnant, I'd run the doppler to check for the baby's heartbeat.

Good luck!

 

[kraskadva]

The general consensus, as often stated by LizzyM, is that if you can smell the patients, it counts as a clinical experience.


*Edit* You're absolutely right gonnif. Edited for that.

 

[Goro]

You were told wrong. Volunteer at a clinic, nursing home or hospice, if not a hospital.

- anyways, can someone please give me a few examples of great clinical experience/positions that you are aware of.
- also, i've got an STNA license. however, i do have a bad back, so i can't really do some of the heavy lifting that those guys do. does anyone know how else i can really get involved, clinical experience wise? or any ideas how i can use my STNA license as an advantage to get involved?[/QUOTE]

 

[yankees527]

You were told wrong. Volunteer at a clinic, nursing home or hospice, if not a hospital.

- anyways, can someone please give me a few examples of great clinical experience/positions that you are aware of.
- also, i've got an STNA license. however, i do have a bad back, so i can't really do some of the heavy lifting that those guys do. does anyone know how else i can really get involved, clinical experience wise? or any ideas how i can use my STNA license as an advantage to get involved?

[/QUOTE]
Hey Goro I wanted to get your take on volunteering at a nursing home. Supposedly according to LizzyM volunteering at a nursing home is NOT clinical experience. I transported them to and from their rooms, and just basically had sooooo much more patient interaction with them then I ever did in the hospital. But bringing water to patients in the hospital is all of a sudden clinical. This nursing home is not an assisted living place either, it looks like a full blown hospital. So I really dont understand how would not be considered clinical. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Goro]

I think someone must have misquoted my learned colleague.


My two cents is that working in a nursing home is VERY clinically oriented. In fact, I have a very high opinion of people who do this. You're dealing with some of the most helpless of patients, with no getting better, either. Ditto for working in hospice.


Hey Goro I wanted to get your take on volunteering at a nursing home. Supposedly according to LizzyM volunteering at a nursing home is NOT clinical experience. I transported them to and from their rooms, and just basically had sooooo much more patient interaction with them then I ever did in the hospital. But bringing water to patients in the hospital is all of a sudden clinical. This nursing home is not an assisted living place either, it looks like a full blown hospital. So I really dont understand how would not be considered clinical. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[yankees527]

I think someone must have misquoted my learned colleague.


My two cents is that working in a nursing home is VERY clinically oriented. In fact, I have a very high opinion of people who do this. You're dealing with some of the most helpless of patients, with no getting better, either. Ditto for working in hospice.


Hey Goro I wanted to get your take on volunteering at a nursing home. Supposedly according to LizzyM volunteering at a nursing home is NOT clinical experience. I transported them to and from their rooms, and just basically had sooooo much more patient interaction with them then I ever did in the hospital. But bringing water to patients in the hospital is all of a sudden clinical. This nursing home is not an assisted living place either, it looks like a full blown hospital. So I really dont understand how would not be considered clinical. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply Goro, but if you look in threads Lizzym explicitly states she believes its not clinical so it definitely wasn't misquoted. Anyway, thanks for the clarification!

 

[Goro]

This is one of those rare times I must disagree with my learned colleague.

Thanks for the reply Goro, but if you look in threads LizzyM explicitly states she believes its not clinical so it definitely wasn't misquoted. Anyway, thanks for the clarification!

 

[QofQuimica]

Thanks for the reply Goro, but if you look in threads LizzyM explicitly states she believes its not clinical so it definitely wasn't misquoted. Anyway, thanks for the clarification!

Did she explain why? Can you link to the post where she says this?

FWIW, I agree with Goro that nursing home volunteering definitely counts as clinical experience. If Lizzy did say otherwise, I'd be curious to hear her rationale for why she believes it's not.

 

[yankees527]

Did she explain why? Can you link to the post where she says this?

FWIW, I agree with Goro that nursing home volunteering definitely counts as clinical experience. If Lizzy did say otherwise, I'd be curious to hear her rationale for why she believes it's not.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-this-considered-clinical-volunteering.1007159/

According to her they are "residents" and not patients.
I deal with "residents" with oxygen masks and dementia all the time and they most certainly are not a resident like in a dormitory doing what they please.

 

[QofQuimica]

She seems to be pretty caught up in the technicalities of what it means to be a resident versus a patient, which IMO is just a bunch of semantics. What matters is what gets done at the facility, not how long the people stay there. While it's true that nursing home denizens are "residents" since they live there long-term, I'd argue that a nursing home is _both_ a home _and_ a health care facility. So is a hospice (whether located in a hospital setting or in the person's home), or a psychiatric hospital, or even a rehab. Nursing home or hospice "residents" are therefore _both_ residents _and_ patients, thereby making her attempt to distinguish residents from patients futile.

Here's my litmus test. If you are in a setting where health care is being provided, and you are interacting with people who provide and/or receive said health care while that health care is being provided, then it is a clinical experience. So, this is why babysitting someone's kids, which is not done in a home health care context, is not a clinical experience, while visiting a home hospice patient, which is a home health care context, is. By this standard, volunteering in a nursing home is no different than volunteering in a hospital. As you pointed out, nursing home residents are not living in the NH by choice. They're there because they're incapable of living in regular housing due to the severity of their medical conditions. That is why they are being cared for by in-house nurses and visiting physicians along with a horde of other allied health care personnel. Because people live in a NH for entirely medical reasons, it is an example of how the distinction between "residents" and "patients" is meaningless when referring to long-term care facilities of all types.

 

[nontradmomma]

so, is medical interpreting clinical experience? ie., going to the local hospitals & providing paid interpreting services between patient & doctors/nurses.

 

[QofQuimica]

so, is medical interpreting clinical experience? ie., going to the local hospitals & providing paid interpreting services between patient & doctors/nurses.

Heck yeah, especially if you're a trained and certified interpreter. I'm in the midst of taking a Spanish medical interpreter course right now and experiencing first hand that there's a lot more to being a professional interpreter than just being bilingual and memorizing a few vocab words. And since the doc who was supposed to lead the medical terminology portion of our class couldn't make it and I'm the only physician taking the class, I volunteered to do it. I was looking at an atlas earlier this evening and having flashbacks of freshman med school anatomy all over again....now in Spanish to boot.

 

[nontradmomma]

I just finished a 2 wk interpreter training through my area's largest medical interpreting agency & I'm scheduled to take the exam later this month. then I'll be official. I hope I pass! I should. I think I will. but I'm kinda nervous, lol.

 

[QofQuimica]

I just finished a 2 wk interpreter training through my area's largest medical interpreting agency & I'm scheduled to take the exam later this month. then I'll be official. I hope I pass! I should. I think I will. but I'm kinda nervous, lol.

What is your second language? If you can get certified, it would be a great flexible job to have as a premed, and the training will be helpful to you once you hit the wards, too.

I'm going to take the interpreter course test to get the completion certificate, but I don't think I'll take the actual certification exam. It's expensive; it doesn't do anything for me in terms of career (and I'd have to get interpreter's insurance if I was ever going to really do it); and my Spanish is formal since I mostly learned it in school. I think I'd have to really work on picking up more of the slang expressions and colloquialisms in order to be effective at interpreting for lower-register patients. As it is, I like to bring an interpreter in the room with me while I do my history and physical. I can do 90%+ of each encounter by myself, but here and there I use the interpreter to help me explain a concept in layman's terms, to make sure I'm using the right word for something, or to clarify something the patient is saying for me.

 

[nontradmomma]

Spanish. I learned by speaking at home & with my family, reading books for added practice, visited Venezuela & Spain a bit as a (older) child etc. not much school learning, though there was some. there is no state recognized certification in my state (ohio). the agencies are only required to ensure interpreters have at least 40 hrs of training & that they be assessed for proficiency. so my agency does 55 hrs training & the exam is conducted by a third party (pacific Interpreters exam, out of Oregon). I speak fine. never had issues communicating with native speakers, but I've never actually been tested on it before, so it's a little intimidating. plus, as you pointed out, there's more to interpreting than just being bilingual.

 

[nontradmomma]

and oh yeah, the flexible schedule & the ability to list it as clinical exposure on med school apps are the main reasons for my getting into it.

 

[Plecopotamus]

She seems to be pretty caught up in the technicalities of what it means to be a resident versus a patient, which IMO is just a bunch of semantics. What matters is what gets done at the facility, not how long the people stay there. While it's true that nursing home denizens are "residents" since they live there long-term, I'd argue that a nursing home is _both_ a home _and_ a health care facility. So is a hospice (whether located in a hospital setting or in the person's home), or a psychiatric hospital, or even a rehab. Nursing home or hospice "residents" are therefore _both_ residents _and_ patients, thereby making her attempt to distinguish residents from patients futile.

Here's my litmus test. If you are in a setting where health care is being provided, and you are interacting with people who provide and/or receive said health care while that health care is being provided, then it is a clinical experience. So, this is why babysitting someone's kids, which is not done in a home health care context, is not a clinical experience, while visiting a home hospice patient, which is a home health care context, is. By this standard, volunteering in a nursing home is no different than volunteering in a hospital. As you pointed out, nursing home residents are not living in the NH by choice. They're there because they're incapable of living in regular housing due to the severity of their medical conditions. That is why they are being cared for by in-house nurses and visiting physicians along with a horde of other allied health care personnel. Because people live in a NH for entirely medical reasons, it is an example of how the distinction between "residents" and "patients" is meaningless when referring to long-term care facilities of all types.

I think it's important to consider the nature of the nursing home, b/c (at least where I live) that's a colloquial term that encompasses a wide variety of facilities. They come in a wide variety of types with different services offered. I think the least "clinical" still are a valuable experience, b/c we don't often see how our patients deal with their illnesses at home, but many facilities do not have any physician visits & the nursing is of the lowest level and residents must even be independent for transfers. Those facilities do not really provide a clinical experience. On the other end of the spectrum are "nursing homes" that provide a high level of care like SNFs and rehabilitation hospitals, and particularly in the case of the former, there can be patients there long term who are pretty ill. I see those facilities as clinical because there are physicians on premises or on call (something hospice has, too) who can exercise clinical judgment to change care . . . at the other end of the spectrum, residents need to be taken to a clinical setting to get those evaluations. I think you/goro are thinking of "nursing homes" on a different part of the spectrum than Lizzy M, and it's important for a pre-med to use his or her judgment to get a proper fit.

 

[nontradmomma]

so I passed my medical interpreter training & exam with flying colors (yay) & have been working as a p/t medical interpreter for about a month & I really like it. I fully recommend it for any bilingual premeds looking for paid clinical exposure.