enough clinical experience?

[exeunt]

i know clinical experience/shadowing is one of the most important parts of the app, and i was wondering how i'm doing so far. i've heard a lot of horror stories about applicants with good stats but who got rejected because they didn't have enough shadowing experience. i did a semester of hospital volunteering (4 hours a week), spent winter break volunteering/shadowing in the ER dept at a rural hospital in china, and am planning on doing a month long internship at my doctor's clinic this summer. is this sufficient? i'm not sure if i'll have time to continue volunteering during the upcoming school year, unless i still have a significant lack of experience. thanks for your advice!

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[Blade28]

How's the rest of your app? GPA, MCAT, letters of recommendation?

 

[perutz]

It also matters if you are still involved in those activities. I'd imagine you probably won't be going back to China but are you still keeping up with the hospital volunteering?

 

[doomknight]

my guess is that he/she just finished soph year and hasnt taken mcat

 

[exeunt]

the hospital volunteering is what i'm debating whether or not i should continue..am i okay so far if i don't? or do i really need to? where do i stand in terms of clinical experience?

doomknight is correct- i just finished sophomore year with a 3.9, and am going to take the mcat on august 7th.

 

[lisasimpson87]

all i have in terms of formal clinical experience is one year volunteering at a hospital (3 hrs/week soph year, i did not continue after soph year) and one week shadowing diff docs at a hospital (40 hrs). i was a little worried that this wouldn't be enough, but ppl i've talked to said it's fine as long as i can demonstrate an understanding of what it's like to be a doc if that comes up. in terms of whether you should continue volunteering- i did not bc i had good reasons. so if the adcom is like, why did you stop volunteering? have something legitimate to say other than "i thought i had gotten enough clinical experience to get into med school, so i stopped" make sense?

 

[perutz]

To the OP, unless you are planning on doing clinical work in a different capacity next year, I would stick with the volunteering. Showing commitment and dedication is important; otherwise, it just looks like you lost interest or might not enjoy being in a hospital environment.

 

[Didmybest]

you do not have to have any clinical experience to be accepted to med school, you can look at some med school websites and they'll even put percentages of what people did. However, the majority of successful applicants have medical experience. That said, you really don't need that much; I hardly had any hospital volunteering when I applied and was admitted to several schools.

 

[SirGecko]

If you have time to continue volunteering, do so. If you don't then don't worry about it.

 

[cwfergus]

Hey i have a question, how do you do clinical experiance?
like do you just go to the hospital and ask? i dont know, it seems weird to do clinical before you even get into med school/nursing

 

[se2131]

The only clinical stuff I did was shadowing for one summer, something like 12 hours a week for 7-8 weeks at a few hospitals. No clinical volunteering on my app at all. None of my interviewers questioned whether I had enough clinical experience and why I didn't continue afterwards

 

[bawer234]

NO!!!!! You don't have enough clinical exp.!!! I volunteered at a hospital for 15months, an underserved clinic for another 15 months and shadowed doctors in addition to all this quite a few times. Some of this overlapped but all in all I ended up with about 30 months of clinical experience.

My state school had 545 applicants apply this year. My GPA was above their avg as well as my MCAT. 150 seats were filled and 150 waitlist possitions were also given. Guess what...I was flat out rejected. Why? I called them and asked and you know what they told me? "Compared to the other applicants this year your clinical experience was low." That was the ONLY reason. I **** you not. When I called Unversity of Chicago and asked for their oppinion on my applicaiton, they also told me that my clinical experience was low compared to others.

I have been accepted and interviewed at multiple schools but don't ever think that you can put a check mark next your clincal experience and call it a day. Keep getting exposure. TRUST ME! From someone who knows and who has actually been through the applicaiton process, let me tell you, keep volunteering and shadowing. Its the one thing that I wish I could go back and improve. Also, dont just go for quantity and don't just go for quality. Go for quality AND quantity! Get a position where you will actually get to see and participate in some juicy stuff. EVERYONE volunteered at the ER. You aren't openning any eyes by doing this (although it was a great place to start). It time to move on to something where you will be working directly with diverse populations (another thing that I apparently lacked).

SUMMARY: Do you have enough clincal experience? Maybe, but why risk it? Better to increase your chances at getting into a school you really want to go to. Plus, you'll have a lot more to talk about in your interviews (giving an example of my clinical experience ALWAYS came up). You can learn a TON of information at the right job/volunteer position. Besides, you should enjoy being around and involved with medicine. As long as it isn't affecting your grades and test scores, I would say that it's a top priority. Don't trade clinical exp. for a leadership position in some pre-health club or at the chance to do research (unless you want to go to research school or be an MD/Ph.D.). This is what I wish someone had told me 5 years ago.

 

[tdsbird2]

the dean at CU said the benchmark there is around 500 hours of clinical experience....depending on what counts on my app i am somewhere around 200 to 2500...hope they count like i count