Does this military collateral duty count as clinical experience?

[AvsPearTree]

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So kind of a reach, but trying to see if I can boost up my clinical experience.

On my ship I had a collateral duty as the Safety Officer. Focused on training the crew, doing reports, basically overall in charge of safety.
As the safety officer I was heavily involved with the medical department. Anytime someone was injured I had to investigate it. This meant I was talking to doc frequently, interviewing the injured person as soon as it occurred (usually while they were in the clinic), and I was the primary liaison between our doctor and the ships captain when mishaps happened so i frequently sat in with our doctor when he spoke and treated injured personnel.

Basically even though I was just a safety officer, I was frequently in the medical, worked directly with our medical team, and had direct patient interactions. Its really what taught me a lot of the medical jargon and exposed me to the medical field, but I can't decide if I can actually warrant it as clinical experience.

 

[Dral]

Tough one. My gut reaction is not to list it there. That's on the surface just based on the fact that the original intent was not to gain clinical experience.

While you did gain clinical experience as a side benefit, it wasn't your main intent of the position.

You can consider it another way. In my opinion, a major intent of clinical experience is to learn about what the day to day life of being a physician is like. Most people have an idealized opinion of what that is. Thus, the idea is to try understand as much as possible what the day to day is to see if it's something someone still would want to do. I'm not totally sure you were immersed enough to fulfill that intent. But then again, maybe you were.

If I was reviewing your app I don't think I'd mind if it was listed as clinical. I'm just not sure if everyone would feel it fulfilled the true intent of clinical experience though and might consider it as an attempt at padding that portion of your app.

I'd be interested to see what others think. Maybe someone with more military experience can chime in and better say either way where to list it.

Either way, I would list it prominently somewhere as it surely will be an interesting experience to discuss during interviews.

 

[AvsPearTree]

Tough one. My gut reaction is not to list it there. That's on the surface just based on the fact that the original intent was not to gain clinical experience.

While you did gain clinical experience as a side benefit, it wasn't your main intent of the position.

You can consider it another way. In my opinion, a major intent of clinical experience is to learn about what the day to day life of being a physician is like. Most people have an idealized opinion of what that is. Thus, the idea is to try understand as much as possible what the day to day is to see if it's something someone still would want to do. I'm not totally sure you were immersed enough to fulfill that intent. But then again, maybe you were.

If I was reviewing your app I don't think I'd mind if it was listed as clinical. I'm just not sure if everyone would feel it fulfilled the true intent of clinical experience though and might consider it as an attempt at padding that portion of your app.

I'd be interested to see what others think. Maybe someone with more military experience can chime in and better say either way where to list it.

Either way, I would list it prominently somewhere as it surely will be an interesting experience to discuss during interviews.

good point about the jobs main intention. I was leaning towards as you mentioned not labeling at clinical especially if someone would think it is padding, i would love to label it as clinical as I actually did volunteer to take it because I would get to work closely with medical, but you are right that if you look up that job on paper there is very minimal reference to working with the medical department.

 

[xffan624]

I was a safety officer in my unit as well (army combat unit). I had minimal clinical interaction in that role but I guess YMMV. You can certainly reference this experience in essays as something that increased your interest in medicine but I wouldn't call this a clinical experience.

So kind of a reach, but trying to see if I can boost up my clinical experience.

On my ship I had a collateral duty as the Safety Officer. Focused on training the crew, doing reports, basically overall in charge of safety.
As the safety officer I was heavily involved with the medical department. Anytime someone was injured I had to investigate it. This meant I was talking to doc frequently, interviewing the injured person as soon as it occurred (usually while they were in the clinic), and I was the primary liaison between our doctor and the ships captain when mishaps happened so i frequently sat in with our doctor when he spoke and treated injured personnel.

Basically even though I was just a safety officer, I was frequently in the medical, worked directly with our medical team, and had direct patient interactions. Its really what taught me a lot of the medical jargon and exposed me to the medical field, but I can't decide if I can actually warrant it as clinical experience.

 

[AvsPearTree]

I was a safety officer in my unit as well (army combat unit). I had minimal clinical interaction in that role but I guess YMMV. You can certainly reference this experience in essays as something that increased your interest in medicine but I wouldn't call this a clinical experience.

Thanks for the reply and i appreciate the input!

My stint as a safety officer was onboard a amphib with a full medical department and over 400 people onboard (excluding marines). I was in medical so much because doc was fresh out of fork and knife school, he knew i was interested in going medical, we had a bad stint onboard with a lot of injuries, so it ended up just working well in at least giving me some exposure to the medical field.

 

[Unskilled Enzyme]

I wouldn't consider it clinical, but you should def write it up, maybe even as a most meaningful exp if that was your aha moment.

i had some similar experiences in the army, and my personal statement opening was about a medical encounter i observed incidental to my real job that kicked off my "why medicine" journey.