Getting Clinical Experience

[su_grad2007]

Hello everyone. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on getting clinical experience for medical school. Do you have clinical experience and if so how did you get it? I already have a full time job as and admin assistant and won't be getting a job in the medical field so I have to get experience outside my normal working hours. Would volunteering at the hospital be a good way to go and then shadowing drs occasionally. Basically I need to decide if medical school is for me. I graduated in May with a BS in Animal Behavior with a plan to go to vet school. I decided that vet school isn't for me, but I love medicine and I think that human medicine would be a better fit for me. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated 🙂

 

[njbmd]

You don't need "clinical" experience per se for admission to medical school but you do need to minimally shadow a physician and do some volunteer work. You do not have to obtain a job in a medical field for admission to medical school but you do have to show evidence that you know what the profession of being a physician entails. If you have a job, you don't need to leave your job but you DO need to do some volunteer work and you DO need to do some physician shadowing.

 

[thoffen]

njbmd certainly has more authority than me, but I disagree sligthly. You do need some clinical experience. Shadowing is enough provided you have other volunteering, but I think it would be better if you were a hospital volunteer, for example. Be wary though, I had to call 13 hospitals to find one that would let me sniff patients on either nights or weekends.

 

[obesedude]

Su grad,
I was in a similar situation as you. Worked fulltime, school part time, and was worried about clinical experience. I couldn't go the traditional route and sign up for a program through the my post-bac school/local hospitals because those were designated for undergrads but what I found most helpful was actually reaching out to some of the local medical schools for advice. They were more than helpful in helping me find a physician I could shadow. What made it even better was they found a physician I could work with around my schedule. Not only did this allow me to get experience and exposure to the field but some helpful networking.

If this isn't an option for you though, you might want to ask your primary physician if you can shadow him/her or one of their colleagues or you might actually want to visit a hospital and ask if you can shadow a physican for a few hours. A friend of mine works in the ER at one of the hospitals here in NJ and he said all last summer he had students showing up asking if they could shadow a physician. Many times they were allowed to do so.