direct patient care experience

[docdoc55]

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Can anyone give me a bit of advice? After my interview, they recommended proving my study skills by taking some upper level science classes and getting direct patient care. I really don't like the idea of becoming a nurses assistant. Does anyone have any other options?

 

[7starmantis]

Can anyone give me a bit of advice? After my interview, they recommended proving my study skills by taking some upper level science classes and getting direct patient care. I really don't like the idea of becoming a nurses assistant. Does anyone have any other options?

You should do a search on SDN for "clinical experience" or such. There are many ways to get "direct patient care" experience as it relates to EC's for med school. I wouldn't think you need "care" as much as "exposure". Some of the gold standards are physician shadowing and scribe work.

 

[DrSmooth]

I haven't been following your threads, so I am assuming "they" is a postbacc program or something like that. To find hands on clinical experience either google "hospital volunteer" or call around to the hospitals in your area. Some will be connected with volunteer programs, or some may have in-house programs, some will have nothing. I had to call around to maybe 10 hospitals to find one with a decent volunteer program. Just be careful that they involve "patient care", such as hooking up monitors, getting vitals, transporting, and not just sitting in the gift shop. Usually it's a 4-hour a week commitment. You will need this before applying to med school anyway. Physician shadowing would be good also, you can call your primary doctor or a family friend to get your foot in the door.

 

[illegallysmooth]

At the hospital where I work, they generally don't let volunteers touch patients. They do busy work, office stuff, deliveries.

Why don't you want to be a nurse's assistant? I can't think of better prep for patient care. You need to learn to touch people without feeling awkward and uncomfortable. There are some "brands" of nursing assistants (called Immediate Treatment Assistants, Patient Care Assistants) etc, that learn to do EKGs, draw blood, basic life support, etc.

 

[Catalystik]

Direct patient care=clinical experience. You have lots of options for acquiring it.

Clinical Experience
You can get clinical experience with sick people through the workplace, for class credit, data gathering for a clinical trial, or via volunteerism. It can be gained at a free, family-planning, or private clinic, hospice, hospital, VA, residential home, rehabilitation facility, nursing home, as a first responder, among others.

Clinical patient experience is not always gained in a clinical environment, eg EMT, battle field medic, home hospice care, physical therapy aide, special camp environments. In such a case, you also should acquire some experience in a clinical milieu where doctors work, as specified above.

The advantage of gaining clinical exposure through volunteerism, is that it also is looked on as community service, another unwritten requirement for your application.

Shadowing is a type of clinical exposure, but because it is passive while you observe the role a physician plays (watching how a physician conducts business with patients and staff, takes a history, conducts a physical, counsels and treats, dictates notes, takes phone calls, does paperwork), it is not sufficient in itself. Though you choose voluntarily to shadow, it is not a "volunteer" experience, as it does not serve the patient. You need to get in this type of experience in addition to the above.

 

[ruiner]

Can anyone give me a bit of advice? After my interview, they recommended proving my study skills by taking some upper level science classes and getting direct patient care. I really don't like the idea of becoming a nurses assistant. Does anyone have any other options?

Are you a student now or do you have a career going? Because unless you are making big bucks why don't you want to become a NA? Do you think you're not going to have touch sick patients as a physician. I have learned a lot in my time as a tech (which admittedly does more then a NA), and it was a major topic at each interview.

 

[riverjib]

Can anyone give me a bit of advice? After my interview, they recommended proving my study skills by taking some upper level science classes and getting direct patient care. I really don't like the idea of becoming a nurses assistant. Does anyone have any other options?

Why don't you like the idea of assisting nurses?

 

[NTF]

Why don't you like the idea of assisting nurses?

I was kind of thinking the same thing. Most pre-meds would kill for that job. I did it and it was a great experience.

 

[Nasrudin]

I was kind of thinking the same thing. Most pre-meds would kill for that job. I did it and it was a great experience.

Indeed. And in fact. Medicine would be a more hospitable enterprise within health care if its white coated overlords understood what it meant to stand in the unidirectional flow of work coming from above. And all of the thousands of daily ego accommodations that that entails.

I was browsing the hinterlands of this forum and noticed how attending private practice physicians were griping about their assistants like fat monarchs who cannot understand why their meals are a tad too this or that.

Very few physicians get it. Get it! You dig. And for those that do. We will follow them into the end of the earth and ask no questions.

If you ask me. Not that anybody has or will. But. Everyone should work the bedpan for a year or two during their studies. Everyone. Shadowing is for b@ll****ters.

 

[mooshika]

Indeed. And in fact. Medicine would be a more hospitable enterprise within health care if its white coated overlords understood what it meant to stand in the unidirectional flow of work coming from above. And all of the thousands of daily ego accommodations that that entails.

I was browsing the hinterlands of this forum and noticed how attending private practice physicians were griping about their assistants like fat monarchs who cannot understand why their meals are a tad too this or that.

Very few physicians get it. Get it! You dig. And for those that do. We will follow them into the end of the earth and ask no questions.

If you ask me. Not that anybody has or will. But. Everyone should work the bedpan for a year or two during their studies. Everyone. Shadowing is for b@ll****ters.

One can't really learn medicine unless you have patient contact, the more the better. An example is that there can be two patients alike in every aspect on paper, labs, films, diagnosis, - but when you come into contact with each of them, one can appear to be on deaths bed and the other ready to get up and take a spin around the unit. If you work as an NA, you will get personal contact with people who will stay in your memory for a long long time. When you are taught things in the classroom, things you saw during your time as an NA will suddenly make sense.

It is not something I would want to do for long, but it is a very instructive and can be a very rewarding experience to help feed someone who is too sick to help themselves, or to wash someone's hair for them who can't get out of bed - it makes them feel so much better. It is just a good thing to do.