Clinical Experience?

[jenzhang636]

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So I'm aiming to apply for MD/PhD programs next cycle and was wondering what the bare minimum for clinical experience is? As of now, I've shadowed and am very slowly building my clinical volunteering.

Shadowing: ~30 hours at the trauma bay in a local hospital. I've been able to talk to surgeons, med students and actually interact with patients.

Clinical volunteering: ~10 hours. Right now, I'm just volunteering with a local hospice. I'm running into problems where my job (full-time, 9-5) prevents me from volunteering at local clinics since most of them aren't open on the weekends. I've been trying to focus on smaller clinics rather than large hospitals since I've heard that they offer a greater opportunity to do things beyond answering phones, etc.

Non-clinical volunteering: ~20 at a women's health clinic. I don't interact with patients but all my volunteering so far has been focused on health education. I've also volunteered for probably ~1000 hours or more at a community theater during college but I'm not sure if that actually counts as volunteering or just an extracurricular.

I know that MD/PhD applicants usually don't need as much clinical experience but I do think my mine is not enough (even though I've genuinely enjoyed what I've done so far). Any tips on how to expand my experience or how much schools usually look for?

 

[bluelamin]

Try to go to for 50+ hrs for clinical. 100 would be ideal

 

[jenzhang636]

Try to go to for 50+ hrs for clinical. 100 would be ideal

Does that include shadowing? Or just clinical volunteering?

 

[TurtleGnome]

I am applying this cycle with pretty low clinical volunteering/experience. ~25 hours at a large medical center (more hours now then when I applied) and ~12 hours at a small local clinic. I’m getting plenty of love from MSTP programs, even some higher ranked ones.
That said, I think the quality and quantity of research and non-clinical volunteering are essential if you have low clinical hours. Definitely try to up those hours before applying.

 

[bluelamin]

Does that include shadowing? Or just clinical volunteering?

Includes shadowing

 

[TurtleGnome]

Includes shadowing

This makes sense; I had ~65 hours shadowing, so all told I was probably at ~110 hours

 

[s_med]

I agree with the 100-hour goal. I applied with 90 and had good results.

If you can, try to shadow an MD/PhD in your field of interest. It's hard to organize and it won't hurt you if you don't manage to do it, but it will give you a better idea of what the career is like and will help you answer interview questions about why the MD/PhD path is right for you.