Clinical Experience?

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I know the standard is "if you can smell the patient, it counts." However, a few clarifications would be wonderful:

1. Shadowing a physician in the OR. Clinical experience, or something else?

2. Being a patient oneself. Whether its a brief trip to the OR, having surgery, or staying in the hospital a couple days.

3. Working with animals in a surgical setting.

4. Working in a clinic/hospital where your primary job is to stock shelves and you have little-no patient contact.

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I know the standard is "if you can smell the patient, it counts." However, a few clarifications would be wonderful:

1. Shadowing a physician in the OR. Clinical experience, or something else?

2. Being a patient oneself. Whether its a brief trip to the OR, having surgery, or staying in the hospital a couple days.

3. Working in a clinic/hospital where your primary job is to stock shelves and you have little-no patient contact.

1) Clinical experience
2) Not clinical experience
3) Clinical experience though not as much as 1
 
1. Definitely. You are in an OR, after all.

2. I guess you would have some exposure to what it's like to be a patient, and that could be valuable. I wouldn't list it on anything.

3. Can you smell them? That's the standard it has to come back to, but you can make the determination as to what you got out of it. Do you now know better how a hospital works or how patient care is delivered? The smell thing is just a standard against which you measure its worth as app worthy material.

EDIT: The non human surgery thing isn't clinical as physicians treat humans.

@Spinach Dip What are y'all doing with the animals, btw?
 
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I know the standard is "if you can smell the patient, it counts." However, a few clarifications would be wonderful:

1. Shadowing a physician in the OR. Clinical experience, or something else?

2. Being a patient oneself. Whether its a brief trip to the OR, having surgery, or staying in the hospital a couple days.

3. Working with animals in a surgical setting.

4. Working in a clinic/hospital where your primary job is to stock shelves and you have little-no patient contact.

Did you change the numbering after people responded?

1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. If you have some patient contact - yes. If you have no patient contact - no.
 
Did you change the numbering after people responded?

1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. If you have some patient contact - yes. If you have no patient contact - no.
I agree with Ismet, though I would consider shadowing to be a passive clinical experience since you are not being helpful in some way. Shadowing is listed separately on the application, under its own category. Some programs will deem shadowing to be sufficient clinical exposure, but most would like to also see some active clinical experience where you interact with sick and injured people, as well.

I'll add that, as fun as observing surgeries might be, all your shadowing should not be physician-unconscious patient observation.
 
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