What kind of clinical experience is needed?

RasslinGod said:

this might be asked a trillion times, but im concerned about something. Is patient interaction in a hospital al lthats required for clinical experience?

Would the adcoms ask you: how do you know if you want to go iinto medicine if you've never had hands on experience or seen a doctor do their thing?

Getting hands-on and shadowing is hard. Hands-on could be against the law. Shadowing opps, from my exp, are rare.

So im having trouble answering the question because i've never had those oppertunities. Sure i interact w/ the patients, but i don't know what medicine is really like unless i see exactly what a doctor is doing right?

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Where are you located at? You can try to get an EMT-B certificate and get yourself recruited part-time with the 911 or volunteer at a community hospital as a helper. If you stayed at Atlanta GA, i know of someone (a resident)whom you can approach for shadowing..

There are lots of ways to get clinical experience. You can shadow, volunteer at clinics/hospitals, get a job as an orderly/transporter, etc. I'm a pharmacy tech, and it's working out fine.

Would the adcoms ask you: how do you know if you want to go iinto medicine if you've never had hands on experience or seen a doctor do their thing?

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I think that's a fairly likely question they'd ask themselves or ask you in an open interview. A lack of clinical experience will count against you heavily, so don't let it be an issue in the first place.

You should see if you can volunteer at a local free clinic. There tends to be more flexibility there in terms of what you can and can't do (unlike hospitals, where there tends to be more bureaucracy). For instance, I started volunteering in a free clinic just answering phones/manning the waiting room and worked my way up to doing HIV testing and counseling just by being dedicated and showing interest in HIV. Then I had TONS of patient interaction. I have other friends who have done similar things at other clinics. Just like anything else in life, it's about persistance, dedication, etc.

I agree with posters above. Try to get some volunteer experience if you can't find anyone to shadow.

RasslinGod said:

this might be asked a trillion times, but im concerned about something. Is patient interaction in a hospital al lthats required for clinical experience?

Would the adcoms ask you: how do you know if you want to go iinto medicine if you've never had hands on experience or seen a doctor do their thing?

Getting hands-on and shadowing is hard. Hands-on could be against the law. Shadowing opps, from my exp, are rare.

So im having trouble answering the question because i've never had those oppertunities. Sure i interact w/ the patients, but i don't know what medicine is really like unless i see exactly what a doctor is doing right?

Click to expand...

Shadowing experiences are easy to find IMO. You just have to look. Between myself and 2 roommates, we shadowed 10 different physicians. Physicians are usually receptive.

Clinical experience is just for the adcoms to see that you can handle being around sick people, not for you to know exactly what a physician does every day (though it is helpful). At almost every school I've gone to they've talked about excellent students dropping out after taking step 1 and starting clinical rotations because they realize they do not or cannot handle being around sick people every day. Even my a couple of my interviewers ended up brining this up one way or another. So IMO, any kind, I didn't shadow and got accepted.

I agree with all the other posters. Just to add, I think it's critical to have patient interaction not only so that you can deal with being around sick people but so that you can learn to communicate effectively with a very unique population. As a physician you are going to come across a variety of patients and I think being able to communicate the medical knowledge that you will have to patients who really depend on you and value your opinion is a huge part of being a physician. You need to learn to deal with compliant and non-compliant patients, awesome and awful patients and getting some sense of clinical experience either via clinical research, shadowing, EMT...whatever is going to give your first exposure to that. And I think that's what a lot of adcoms look for in its prospective students...