Does this count as clinical experience?

[thefatefulone]

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Working for a college organization that pairs students with HIV-positive children and teenagers from a local underpriveleged community? On a weekly basis, students would mentor these young people, which included visits both when they were in the hospital or otherwise recieving traeatment, as well as when in the community. I know this is not the same as hardcore hospital volunteering experience, but was wondering whether it could be seen as clinical or is purely volunteer work?

 

[MilkmanAl]

That certainly sounds like better clinical experience than "hardcore hospital volunteering" to me. Which would you say is more relevant to medicine: changing beds or mentoring people with a deadly disease, in and out of the hospital? I don't see why you could not count that as clinical experience.

 

[Salt and Lime]

Working for a college organization that pairs students with HIV-positive children and teenagers from a local underpriveleged community? On a weekly basis, students would mentor these young people, which included visits both when they were in the hospital or otherwise recieving traeatment, as well as when in the community. I know this is not the same as hardcore hospital volunteering experience, but was wondering whether it could be seen as clinical or is purely volunteer work?

Were you one of the students working directly with the HIV+ children and teenagers, or were you working for the organization in some other capacity? (i.e. fundraising, website maintenance, filing...) That would change my impression of whether or not it was a clinical experience.

 

[LizzyM]

How often would you see these kids in the hospital? I didn't think that hospitalization for HIV was very common these days.... Mostly I'd categorize it as teaching/tutoring and mention that the children were affected by HIV and were from a community with many unmet needs. It is altruistic even if it isn't really clinical (they are kids, not "patients" most of the time even if they have a chronic illness -- would you call it clinical if you tutored a college student with diabetes? even if you visited him in the hospital when he had a complication?)