What exactly is considered clinical experience?

[boardgal]

I just was wondering what exactly counts as clinical experience. I was a camp counselor at a week-long camp for kids with some pretty serious physical and mental disabilities. I helped feed and bathe campers and administered meds. Since it was an overnight camp, I was responsible for the campers for a total of about 150hrs (Several nights I had to get up to change diapers, administer meds etc). There was a physician and several nurses on staff too. Does this count as clinical experience? Will adcoms see it that way?

Also, does shadowing count as clinical experience?

Any thoughts would be really helpful! Thanks!

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[Tin Man]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=622309

 

[Mobius1985]

IMO, your described experience as a camp counselor, whether paid or volunteer, was certainly clinical experience. By the definition of LizzyM (one of SDN's regularly contributing adcomm members), if you are close enough to smell patients, it's a clinical experience. Additional clinical activity in another venue would be a good idea, to demonstrate a breadth of experience.

Shadowing is clinical exposure, but being passive and not serving the patient in any way, is not really "clinical experience" for the purposes of the AMCAS application. It is generally listed under the "Other" category on the pull-down menu of options. Shadowing is also considered to be an important experience by most (but not all) med schools.

 

[LizzyM]

Campers are not patients. Campers are not receiving clinical services from counselors at camp. Sometimes people with chronic illnesses are patients and sometimes they are just people.

If you count administering meds and changing diapers to be clinical service then I had that in spades when I took care of own my newborn children. (Yes, sometimes they smelled but they were NOT patients except when they went to the doctor for their innoculations.) Administering meds and changing diapers are nursing services if the person is in a clincal setting but I'm not sure that a camp is a clinical setting.

 

[Siverhideo1985]

Campers are not patients. Campers are not receiving clinical services from counselors at camp. Sometimes people with chronic illnesses are patients and sometimes they are just people.

If you count administering meds and changing diapers to be clinical service then I had that in spades when I took care of own my newborn children. (Yes, sometimes they smelled but they were NOT patients except when they went to the doctor for their innoculations.) Administering meds and changing diapers are nursing services if the person is in a clincal setting but I'm not sure that a camp is a clinical setting.

What if the camp had full-time doctors and nurses present that treated the campers for ongoing medical conditions?

Personally, I felt that I learned alot more about the needs and states of "patients" at my camp experience for children with cancer than some of the "clinical" experiences that I've had.

I do think I listed it as volunteering-nonclinical on amcas, however, i often discussed it in terms of its significance of why I want to become a doctor, etc....and it seemed like most interviewers that asked about it considered it a clinical experience.

 

[Tin Man]

What if the camp had full-time doctors and nurses present that treated the campers for ongoing medical conditions?

Personally, I felt that I learned alot more about the needs and states of "patients" at my camp experience for children with cancer than some of the "clinical" experiences that I've had.

It's hard to say something's "clinical" if it's not at a hospital, health care building, or, well, a clinic.

The idea of a clinical experience is not to demonstrate you have compassion toward people. That's what the volunteering part is for. The point of a clinical experience is to demonstrate that you have been involved in medicine at the clinical level, and you actually understand (as much as any pre-med can) what you're getting yourself into.

A week at fat camp isn't going to demonstrate that you have any knowledge of what a typical doctor goes through, since typical doctors work in hospitals, clinics, private practice, or whatever. The volunteering you did was good to establish your credibility toward going into medicine for the right reasons, but not that you really have experience in medicine well enough to understand what a doctor does past what you see on TV.

 

[Narmerguy]

Can you smell them?

 

[BlueElmo]

What do you guys think is the average number of total hours an applicant spends on clinical volunteering?

 

[silas2642]

I just was wondering what exactly counts as clinical experience. I was a camp counselor at a week-long camp for kids with some pretty serious physical and mental disabilities. I helped feed and bathe campers and administered meds. Since it was an overnight camp, I was responsible for the campers for a total of about 150hrs (Several nights I had to get up to change diapers, administer meds etc). There was a physician and several nurses on staff too. Does this count as clinical experience? Will adcoms see it that way?

Also, does shadowing count as clinical experience?

Any thoughts would be really helpful! Thanks!

According to LizzyM, if you can smell the patient, it counts as clinical experience.

 

[Catalystik]

You were part of a health care team, even though you did not work in the usual clinical environment. Some of your duties and interactions with the campers were health related. The med school I'm affiliated with would look at this as clinical experience, just as they would hopice-care services provided in the home.

 

[LizzyM]

For something like camp, it is better to call it "volunteer, non-clinical" as Silverhideo did. The fact that the kids were sick and that you might have learned something about interacting with the sick would come through in the description of the activity.

Hospice patients are patients so I think that it is fair to call that "Volunteer, clinical".

Bottom line: Have you been in a health care setting where you've been close enough to "smell patients".

At the very minimum, I've seen people have 2 hours per week for a semester. Even better: 2 hours per week or more for a minimum of 1 year.