clinical involvement question

Things like this don't come finding you=). You gotta go out there and find it yourself. So yes, pretty much find some doctors, give them a call, and graciously ask if they have the time to let you shadow them.

With regards to clinical research, its difficult to say. There's a lot of hoops to jump through for that one. There are clearly a lot of clinical studies going on, but those that allow you to work in the hospital (these days) require a lot of additional measures that you have to accomplish. Such as safety, HIPPA courses (online). Need an ID badge. Not to mention the principal investigator will have to include your name on the committee approved research documents.

Pretty much though what does that say, you're going to have to do some research for research exeperience. Find out which ones deal with clinical stuff, and give those labs a call. Really, volunteering for a clinical study is pretty useless unless you have been authorized/qualified to do the study yourself. The med schools may ultimately ask..."what did you do during your research?". One might end up saying "i recorded patient data all day". That doesn't set yourself apart from the next pre-med that does research. Gotta stand out!

With regards to summer internships, check medical school websites for summer programs. THe University of California has them at all of their med schools. May want to apply soon though.

From personal experience, I just went into this research game to just get experience. 4 years later, i've done both laboratory and clinical research. About 20 publications later, and starting my own human research study, I am still working in the same lab having a lot of fun and learning a lot about medicine. Additionally this all come together at the same time. It took 4 years for me to be able to run my own human study, and those publications were earned through hard work. I never looked for publications, but as a result of hardwork in research studies, they come to you. You might ask how i came to this lab? Well i called 10 researchers, and one replied. Yep, and thats the lab i've been at for 4 years.

 

Hold up, you got 20 publications done? How in the world did you do that? And you said four years later? Did you do this all in undergrad?

 

"How in the world did you do that?" That is the same exact thing my gf asks me, and what i ask myself sometimes. To answer your question about if I did this all as an undergrad. No. I did 12 of them during my 3 years as a undergrad junior, senior, super senior. After that I graduated, and I did 6 more. Currently I have 1 that will be published by the time i apply, and the last one is in preparation.

To tell you the truth, I was LUCKY. I found the right professor, and the professor found the right undergrad. He is a maverick of a researcher/physician so his lab works in all kinds of fields. Our big thing is pathology, and testing, which were my first two publications. He was currently writing a textbook, and i helped out by gathering papers. He figured that i was working hard to find these papers so he let me write the appendices for the book. As time progressed we did work in Infectious Diseases, Diabetes, Biomedical Engineering, and various other subjects. All in all, 6 were as first author, 6 as second author, and the remainder being 3rd or 4th authorships. (19)

The 20th one, the book, may yield more, who knows. I'm curently writing two chapters, and will be co-author for another chapter.

Beyond research though, I actually have an additional publication. I recently wrote a manual for the US Army, and continue to update it. Its totally unrelating to medicine, but hey, its something to do I guess.

Like i said, go out and find opportunities, since they usually don't go and find you. I want to point out again, that i pretty much had to leave a message on 10 different answering machines, and only one person replied! Its a bunch of luck, or even divine intervention if you're a religous person. Will it get me into med school? I have NO idea. I hope it does, and I wish it was a definative YES, but realistically, who the heck knows! Doh!