Enough clinical experience?

[MedWonk]

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I know that quality > quantity, but I was wondering if what I have would be sufficient.

I will have when I apply:

170 hours clinical volunteering over 1.5 years
Full-time ER scribe for 3+ months (40ish hours/week, will continue throughout gap year)
10 hours shadowing (will try to get more, but having a difficult time)

 

[Woland]

This is a non trad forum so from a non trad perspective I would say it is much too average.

Our "advanced" age compared to mystical "typical" students gives us advantage of having lived a life and gives us significantly more time for self-realization of our compassion and drive for science. The experiences you listed (if this is all of them) are very vanilla: nearly everyone has 1-2 days of shadowing a doc, scribing is now so common that there is nothing unique about it and if you clinical vlolunteering involved stocking shelf in the ER for 4 hours a week, than your resume is a carbon copy of majority of applicants.

Remember that for some schools is matters what physician you shadow (PCP vs speciality), it matters whether your experiences are unique (i.e. scribing and medical tourism to Latin America seem to fall out of favour).

If you are a non-trad you need to have a life experience that clearly says "this was my calling, I did it because I felt this was my path in life at the time".

If you are a tarditional student, you lack research. Even large portion of non-trads have done some sort of research, although often not in hard sciences/medicine.

This is just my two cents (I am not an adcom).

 

[Goro]

MORE than enough volunteering...time for some shadowing!

I know that quality > quantity, but I was wondering if what I have would be sufficient.

I will have when I apply:

170 hours clinical volunteering over 1.5 years
Full-time ER scribe for 3+ months (40ish hours/week, will continue throughout gap year)
10 hours shadowing (will try to get more, but having a difficult time)

 

[Planes2Doc]

This looks very good, especially when you add in the non-clinical life experiences as a non-trad.

I'm a non-trad myself, and got in with less clinical experience than the typical "traditional" student on SDN. I feel like we get a little bit of a pass on those things, and therefore it kills me to see non-trads put off applying for an additional year to "beef up their ECs."

You're ahead in the curve, and already have more volunteer hours than the non-SDN average (around 100-150). Maybe find some more shadowing and focus on those numbers! Best of luck!

 

[anguisette]

You have more hours than I did when I submitted my AMCAS. As long as you can talk about your clinical experiences in a meaningful way in secondaries and interviews, you should be fine. That's where quality > quantity comes in. I'd also suggest focusing on the shadowing instead.

 

[MedWonk]

This is a non trad forum so from a non trad perspective I would say it is much too average.

Our "advanced" age compared to mystical "typical" students gives us advantage of having lived a life and gives us significantly more time for self-realization of our compassion and drive for science. The experiences you listed (if this is all of them) are very vanilla: nearly everyone has 1-2 days of shadowing a doc, scribing is now so common that there is nothing unique about it and if you clinical vlolunteering involved stocking shelf in the ER for 4 hours a week, than your resume is a carbon copy of majority of applicants.

Remember that for some schools is matters what physician you shadow (PCP vs speciality), it matters whether your experiences are unique (i.e. scribing and medical tourism to Latin America seem to fall out of favour).

If you are a non-trad you need to have a life experience that clearly says "this was my calling, I did it because I felt this was my path in life at the time".

If you are a tarditional student, you lack research. Even large portion of non-trads have done some sort of research, although often not in hard sciences/medicine.

This is just my two cents (I am not an adcom).

I'm non-trad.

I get what you're saying, but what would be a "unique" experience to you? My clinical experiences may indeed be vanilla, but those experiences are what solidified my decision to pursue medicine. I could go do something "unique", but why should I do that when I can find motivation in my "mundane" experiences?

 

[Woland]

I'm non-trad.

I get what you're saying, but what would be a "unique" experience to you? My clinical experiences may indeed be vanilla, but those experiences are what solidified my decision to pursue medicine. I could go do something "unique", but why should I do that when I can find motivation in my "mundane" experiences?

I am not knocking "vanilla" experiences. They are necessary. Except that you need mor shadowing (although scribage counts, unles Goro would say otherwise).

What was missing from you initial post is the non-trad uniquness. What is it? I certainly have no clue what it was in your case. It is something that filled your life and drove you to even thinking, trying out medicine as a profession. Medicine as opposed to nursing, social work, lawyering for the poor. If you look at you past and realize that it is money that drove you to doctoring, than you need to fake it till you make it with a better reason. If money is not the reason, that (IMHO) you have a valid reason already, which is your special non-traditional catch for the adcoms and (hopefully) the anchor for the long road ahead when exhastion and doubt will haunt you and make you think why the **** did you go into medicine.

Sorry, I can not give you my own example since it will identify me IRL.

 

[MedWonk]

I am not knocking "vanilla" experiences. They are necessary. Except that you need mor shadowing (although scribage counts, unles Goro would say otherwise).

What was missing from you initial post is the non-trad uniquness. What is it? I certainly have no clue what it was in your case. It is something that filled your life and drove you to even thinking, trying out medicine as a profession. Medicine as opposed to nursing, social work, lawyering for the poor. If you look at you past and realize that it is money that drove you to doctoring, than you need to fake it till you make it with a better reason. If money is not the reason, that (IMHO) you have a valid reason already, which is your special non-traditional catch for the adcoms and (hopefully) the anchor for the long road ahead when exhastion and doubt will haunt you and make you think why the **** did you go into medicine.

Sorry, I can not give you my own example since it will identify me IRL.

Right on. I didn't post the non-trad background for the same reason (would likely identify me IRL). It's sufficiently unique that people could tie me to my username (some of my post-bacc classmates already have).

I've shadowed nurses, and see social workers in action in the ED, and can safely say I do not want to be in either profession. Scribing+my short shadowing experience+other shadowing experience I didn't list which was initial catalyst have pushed me toward medicine. The other shadowing experience was in a foreign country, not sure how that would play to adcoms.