clinical experience question

[zlyu]

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Just a quick question, if I volunteer in a private clinic, and then I got hired as a medical assistant, do you think that is enough for clinical experience? do I still need to volunteer in a hospital like everyone else does, so to show that I understand what a doctor does in a hospital setting? Thank you very much!!!

 

[primadonna22274]

Medical assisting is fine. Interacting with patients, families, physicians and other health care staff is what's important.

 

[Duff84]

I've worked as a medical assistant in IM for nearly 4 years now. The job, and my experiences in it, have been mentioned in all of my interviews so far this cycle and I have found that my interviewers were very impressed by it. As primadonna mentioned, the best clinical experience you can have is interacting directly with patients and being immersed in the career to get a really good feel for what it's about. I'm clearly biased but in my opinion it gives you a lot more to talk about at interviews as well as making it easy to draw up examples to situations as you are generally exposed to a lot, depending on the facility you're at. That being said, it's never a bad idea to do volunteer work as well. As an MA you would have medical exposure down but you could always volunteer in a non-medical setting. Hope that helps!