Clinical Research Assistant -- Clinical Exposure/Experience?

[numbersloth]

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I'm currently interviewing for a job as a clinical research assistant position at a hospital. The jobs description says that I'll be involved in recruiting patients, consenting and accompanying patients through study visits, compiling data reports, and attending seminars held by department physicians. Would this count as clinical experience?

In addition, if I have extensive non-clinical volunteering (homeless shelter) do I also need clinical volunteering, or would this job + shadowing fulfill clinical exposure?

 

[LizzyM]

If you will be recruiting people who are ill, then they are patients and you might call it "clinical". If they are healthy people being recruited for phase I clinical trials or for other purposes, then it is hard to say it is clinical because you aren't dealing with patients.

It sounds like you might be able to swing some time shadowing physicians after work hours which would provide you with another aspect of clinical exposure. The seminars, if attended by physicians, could be called shadowing, too, in that you are seeing what part of a physician's week is like, and the need to be a life-long learner.