EC Quandary....

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BeachBlondie

Put some tussin on it!
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I didn't yield any results for this question, and I'm tired of searching.

We're all well aware of the kind and caliber of EC's that are expected from us. But, would it be a problem if they came from the same location? Or are the EC requirements in effort to force pre-meds to branch out to a variety of places/experiences?

(Context purposes: I'm a post-bacc student and I need to work to live. I have to pay my tuition, bills, rent, ad nauseum. So, I work full-time as a clinical research tech in the orthopedic biomechanics and biomaterials lab at a major medical center. Because of this, by the time I apply, I will have over 3,000 hours of research time, lots of patient contact, radiology experience, and will have shadowed for more hours than I can count in the OR. That's all well and good, but is this one-stop-shop seen as some form of corner-cutting because it all comes with the job?)

P.S. I've got volunteer and leadership stuff in my background prior to this job. But, my current position is what I'm asking about.

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I think it's a fantastic position with loads of good experiences for medical school. I would love to have a job like this currently.

Do you have any other ECs or major hobbies? I would worry that they wouldn't see you as "different" enough. Although, I'm sure they understand your need to work. Lots of us need to pay the bills....
 
I think it's a fantastic position with loads of good experiences for medical school. I would love to have a job like this currently.

Do you have any other ECs or major hobbies? I would worry that they wouldn't see you as "different" enough. Although, I'm sure they understand your need to work. Lots of us need to pay the bills....

I was worried about them overlooking some of it, I suppose...

Yes, I was an athlete in college, and a student leader. Currently, I am an executive for the pre-health society on my post-bacc campus, too. I also surf, snowboard, and run half marathons. So, I've got a few things to branch off of the job, but I was nervous that the position would suck up most of the requirements and they would all jumble together and lose their distinction.
 
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Definitely do some non-clinical volunteering. They do want to see a variety of experiences.
 
I suggest that you split out the OR shadowing and list it separately. I think you'll need to add some additional dedicated formal shadowing, ideally to include a primary care doc and maybe one other. This goes in the "Other" category.

For the clinical research position: I think you should list it under Research, but the name you give it should reflect that it's a triple header encompassing multiple categories, like, "Paid Research Tech Coordinating Patient Participation," (or something more elegant than that). In the narrative, you'd detail the depth of patient interaction and how your job relates to the research side of things. You could, BTW, equally well list it under Employment-Nonmilitary.

I agree that a listing for volunteer/community service-not medical would be important.
 
I've always been a proponent of quality over quantity.

If the reason you wish to go to medical school is related to your current job at all, ortho for example, Then that would be good. However if you want to head into cardio or emergency med then I would get experience in those areas first.

I would call and speak with the manager/dean of admissions at your prefered med school(s) to see what they like to see.
 
I love surgery, and ortho has always been an interest of mine, so I was elated when I got the job.

Catalystik: Your input--as always--is incredibly valuable. I shadowed a primary care physician a couple of years ago, but it was only 10 hours or so... I imagine I would need more than that. And, I do non-medical volunteering here and there with the pre-health society (I'm an executive), but it falls into the same trap of being part of another endeavor.

Thank you all for your help!
 
I would label your job "employment, clinical" and list it as 35 or 40 hours per week or whatever it is. Research is in the job title and your description can certainly detail the hours spent in the OR, etc. However, I would not consider this "research" unless you are working directly with the person who is developing and testing hypotheses or are developing & testing them yourself. Quite often "clinical research" is contract work where physicians and their staff do as instructed by pharmaceutical and device manufacturers.

That said, reserach experience is not essential, paraticularly if you are a post-bac.
 
I see what you mean, LizzyM.

I do work directly for the PI--the surgeon who directs the department--but it gets a little tricky, I think, due to the nature of the lab itself. We both develop materials (upstairs) and do patient-based research in many forms (downstairs).

One of my primary studies is the wear rate in knee replacement polymers. For this, we track the patients coming into the medical center for the surgery, and do follow-up RSA scans with them for several years afterwards. The information gets logged into a massive registry where we pull the numbers for various studies (such as the primary one I am focusing on, and will eventually be an author of).

We do get contracted to work with big companies, but a great deal of our work is for our PIs' purposes.

Knowing a bit more about it, should I call it research?
 
I do think that it is stronger to call in "employment, non-military" (I was in error when I said "employment, clinical". Its "employment, military" or
"employment, non-military" whereas volunteer is clinical or non-clinical.)

Again, your job title, no doubt, includes the word "research" and your description will describe the work. If you do manage to have a publication, that should get its own entry in the experience section.
 
Fantastic!

Thank you for your help. For ALL of your help on this site :) I imagine steering a bunch of bumbling premeds in the right direction is quite a task.
 
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