Clinical Experience + Public Health Research - PreMed

[pikachu8923]

Hello; I'm trying to figure out what qualifies as clinical experience/particularly if my current job qualifies as clinical experience.

I'm currently working as a research assistant at a school of public health where we are doing in person surveys with People Who Use Drugs, asking questions about drug use and overdose. We do implement an intervention for half of the participants where we do a short Motivational Interviewing session to promote behavior change and train People Who Use Drugs on how to use the Fentanyl Test Strips (which participants can use as a harm reduction tool to prevent an opioid overdose).

We then follow up with the participants over the course of a year, and for the first 4 visits we conduct MI sessions with the participant to promote overdose prevention behaviors. We also collect urine samples to test for different substances, as well as collecting dried blood collections using finger pricks to test for HIV and fentanyl analogues.

Although this is technically a clinical study according to my supervisor/IRB, it feels like it's a pretty weak clinical experience since my only other clinical experience was about 3 years ago (pre-COVID ))))) ), but I really have no idea.

So, I was wondering...
a) does this public health research count as clinical hours?/if anyone could provide clearer insight on clinical hours in general that would be appreciated as well.

Thanks

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[mvenus929]

I mean, you are doing clinical research. As part of the study, you may interact with various other people in the clinic and get a sense of how the health system works. But you're not going to be learning about what it means to live as a physician, which is usually what people are looking for when they say they want to see clinical experience: Do you understand what physicians do? And how what they do is different than other health professionals?

 

[pikachu8923]

I mean, you are doing clinical research. As part of the study, you may interact with various other people in the clinic and get a sense of how the health system works. But you're not going to be learning about what it means to live as a physician, which is usually what people are looking for when they say they want to see clinical experience: Do you understand what physicians do? And how what they do is different than other health professionals?

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the advice!!

 

[pikachu8923]

Hello; I'm trying to figure out what qualifies as clinical experience/particularly if my current job qualifies as clinical experience.

I'm currently working as a research assistant at a school of public health where we are doing in person surveys with People Who Use Drugs, asking questions about drug use and overdose. We do implement an intervention for half of the participants where we do a short Motivational Interviewing session to promote behavior change and train People Who Use Drugs on how to use the Fentanyl Test Strips (which participants can use as a harm reduction tool to prevent an opioid overdose).

We then follow up with the participants over the course of a year, and for the first 4 visits we conduct MI sessions with the participant to promote overdose prevention behaviors. We also collect urine samples to test for different substances, as well as collecting dried blood collections using finger pricks to test for HIV and fentanyl analogues.

Although this is technically a clinical study according to my supervisor/IRB, it feels like it's a pretty weak clinical experience since my only other clinical experience was about 3 years ago (pre-COVID ))))) ), but I really have no idea.

So, I was wondering...
a) does this public health research count as clinical hours?/if anyone could provide clearer insight on clinical hours in general that would be appreciated as well.

Thanks

Any thoughts on if this is clinical? Any insights would be appreciated

@LizzyM
@Moko

 

[LizzyM]

Are you interacting with patients?
No, you are not. You are interacting with research subjects who, I presume, consented to participate in public health research that involves harm reduction and counseling toward behavior change.

So, you can list this as employment (if it is employment) but I would not count it as clinical. Not to say it is not useful to learn how to communicate with people, safely handle body fluids and so forth but if they aren't patients then, at least according to my definition, it is not clinical.

Find some volunteer activity in the hospital for a few hours/wk. Playing with kids on Sunday morning in the pediatric ward is a popular one. Hanging out as an extra set of hands/eyes in the emergency department at night can also be useful if hospitals are open again to volunteers (some are).

 

[pikachu8923]

Are you interacting with patients?
No, you are not. You are interacting with research subjects who, I presume, consented to participate in public health research that involves harm reduction and counseling toward behavior change.

So, you can list this as employment (if it is employment) but I would not count it as clinical. Not to say it is not useful to learn how to communicate with people, safely handle body fluids and so forth but if they aren't patients then, at least according to my definition, it is not clinical.

Find some volunteer activity in the hospital for a few hours/wk. Playing with kids on Sunday morning in the pediatric ward is a popular one. Hanging out as an extra set of hands/eyes in the emergency department at night can also be useful if hospitals are open again to volunteers (some are).

Got it, thank you for the response!!

 

[Goro]

Are you interacting with patients?
No, you are not. You are interacting with research subjects who, I presume, consented to participate in public health research that involves harm reduction and counseling toward behavior change.

So, you can list this as employment (if it is employment) but I would not count it as clinical. Not to say it is not useful to learn how to communicate with people, safely handle body fluids and so forth but if they aren't patients then, at least according to my definition, it is not clinical.

Find some volunteer activity in the hospital for a few hours/wk. Playing with kids on Sunday morning in the pediatric ward is a popular one. Hanging out as an extra set of hands/eyes in the emergency department at night can also be useful if hospitals are open again to volunteers (some are).

As usual, the wise LizzyM is spot on.