Do I need more clinical experience?

[lemonade123]

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I've volunteered at a rehab hospital for 4 summers (about 300 quality hours) since freshman year of high school (I'm currently a 3rd year undergrad), I've done about 30 hours of physician shadowing, and I've volunteered for about 7 months at my university's hospital interacting with medical staff and all. But I'm wondering: since the majority of my clinical experience (the rehab hospital) was done before college, do I need more clinical experience? I have a lot of research and other ECs that will be taking up a lot of time next year, and if I need more clinical experience, I'll need to figure out how to incorporate that soon. Thanks!

 

[jmb10]

No! You have nothing to worry about, that is plenty of experience! Besides, it's generally not the amount of experience (number of hours) you get that counts, it's what you get out of the experience. You need these experiences to confirm your desire to be a doctor after seeing what it's like and you need these experiences to be meaningful. This means that you should be able to talk about (either in a personal statement or interview) specific examples of things you saw that affected your interest in medicine. Hope that helps, good luck in your research and studies!

 

[H Y F R]

Your volunteer experience is great!!

 

[LostInPreMed]

Clinical experiance is clinical experiance! It doesn't really matter when you do it, if you are interacting with patients and medical staff, it is all going to benefit you in the long run! Don't worry about when the hours actually fell; make sure that you keep good records and can put it all down on the AMCAS!


Onwards!

 

[Catalystik]

I've volunteered at a rehab hospital for 4 summers (about 300 quality hours) since freshman year of high school (I'm currently a 3rd year undergrad), I've done about 30 hours of physician shadowing, and I've volunteered for about 7 months at my university's hospital interacting with medical staff and all. But I'm wondering: since the majority of my clinical experience (the rehab hospital) was done before college, do I need more clinical experience? I have a lot of research and other ECs that will be taking up a lot of time next year, and if I need more clinical experience, I'll need to figure out how to incorporate that soon. Thanks!

Did you volunteer at the rehab hospital the summer after HS graduation? Can you return there again this summer?

 

[lemonade123]

Did you volunteer at the rehab hospital the summer after HS graduation? Can you return there again this summer?

Yes, I volunteered at the hospital again for one summer (summer after freshman year when I decided to go premed), but I won't be able to do that this summer since I'm taking classes and studying for the mcat at my university, not in the area of the rehab hospital. If I've only volunteered there fore one summer after hs graduation, is that okay?

 

[Catalystik]

Yes, I volunteered at the hospital again for one summer (summer after freshman year when I decided to go premed), but I won't be able to do that this summer since I'm taking classes and studying for the mcat at my university, not in the area of the rehab hospital. If I've only volunteered there fore one summer after hs graduation, is that okay?

Yes. With your added details, I'd add my agreement to the general opinion above, that you're more than fine, assuming you interacted with patients, rather than filing papers or working in a gift shop.

 

[lemonade123]

Great, thanks for all the input everyone! 🙂