caregiver for adults with developmental disabilities- clinical?

[shehak20000]

Hi, I was just wondering if this was considered clinical experince...since it's not actually in a clinic or hospital....

I would be going to the home of a young adult with developmental disabilities and basically taking care of them for 4-8 hours a week. I'd basically hang out with them- watch tv, play games with, eat with (feed if necessary) and basically be a "substitute caregiver" for a short period of time each week. This would give the primary caregiver a break and let them go out and run errands or relax, and would allow the adult with teh disability to have interaction with someone other then their caretaker.


So is that considered clinical experience?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[kenmc3]

This is definitely a great opportunity and medical schools will look favorably on it. However, it is not considered clinical experience.

For medical school the definition of clinical experience is:

An activity where you can observe first hand what doctors do on a daily basis. Therefore this doesn’t include being an EMT, working at a nursing home, manning a suicide hotline etc. (even though these are all great activities). This does include activities like shadowing physicians and volunteering in certain departments of the hospital where you get to see what physicians do ER/OR – not the gift shop.

Medical schools want to determine two things:

1) Do you really want to be a doctor and do you really know what doctors do? This is what you need the clinical experience for.

2) Are you a motivated individual who helps out his community? This includes any other volunteer activity you do, community service, jobs like EMT – or the one you are interested in.

 

[LizzyM]

This is definitely a great opportunity and medical schools will look favorably on it. However, it is not considered clinical experience.

For medical school the definition of clinical experience is:

An activity where you can observe first hand what doctors do on a daily basis. Therefore this doesn’t include being an EMT, working at a nursing home, manning a suicide hotline etc. (even though these are all great activities). This does include activities like shadowing physicians and volunteering in certain departments of the hospital where you get to see what physicians do ER/OR

I agree that helping an individual in his home with activities of daily living is not a clinical experience (if that were the case then babysitting for infants would be a clinical experience too) but I disagree with kenmc3 on the definition of clinical experience. Providing clinical services (touching patients in the context of providing medical care -- or as I famously put it, "smelling patients") regardless of whether physicians are present counts as far as the adcom at my school is concerned. Being able to set the stage and put a person at ease, elicit information and so forth are the skills that you can begin to develop before getting to med school and you also get an idea if spending a life time around sick people suits you.

 

[kenmc3]

I agree that helping an individual in his home with activities of daily living is not a clinical experience (if that were the case then babysitting for infants would be a clinical experience too) but I disagree with kenmc3 on the definition of clinical experience. Providing clinical services (touching patients in the context of providing medical care -- or as I famously put it, "smelling patients") regardless of whether physicians are present counts as far as the adcom at my school is concerned. Being able to set the stage and put a person at ease, elicit information and so forth are the skills that you can begin to develop before getting to med school and you also get an idea if spending a life time around sick people suits you.

LizzyM – I agree with what you are saying and I think I should amend my stance. I think that non-physician contact clinical experience is important and all medical schools would agree that it is clinical experience. However, I think it is still very important for an applicant to have exposure to physicians as well. So if someone were applying to med school, was an EMT and never spent time with a physician, I would want to make sure they knew what they were getting into. So smell patients all you want – just make sure a physician smells with you occasionally.