Is this clinical volunteering?

[ditritium monoxide]

At my school's health center, the psychiatry department provides the opportunity to a few to serve as a peer mentor to students enrolled at my school with asperger's syndrome/autistic spectrum disorder. This entails meeting with the student with ASD weekly to meet 2 set goals for the year and discussing progress with the school psychiatrist weekly. Meeting with the psychiatrist is important because he/she gives insight into how the mentee's condition will make fulfilling the goal more difficult and into the best approaches to fulfill the goal. With all this said, would this be considered clinical volunteering? I'd like to apply for this program soon and would like to know.

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[mcatjelly]

If you want to do this, do it. It sounds like an awesome experience.

That being said, I don't think it's clinical. You'll be mentoring someone in the community and while you will be meeting with a physician, it's not in a clinical setting, and your mentee is not a patient--this is key.

But again, I don't see how this could be anything but a positive experience for you, so unless you're only looking for clinical experience, I would do it.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

If you want to do this, do it. It sounds like an awesome experience.

That being said, I don't think it's clinical. You'll be mentoring someone in the community and while you will be meeting with a physician, it's not in a clinical setting, and your mentee is not a patient--this is key.

But again, I don't see how this could be anything but a positive experience for you, so unless you're only looking for clinical experience, I would do it.

Are you sure the mentee isn't a patient? The mentee gets treated by the psychiatrist, and this peer mentoring program is technically part of the treatment.

I'd like to still do this program, but I'm a bit low on clinical volunteering. Is there a way I could possibly spin this as such?

 

[candbgirl]

Do you have any clinical ECs? The program sounds really great but I'm not sure you could use it for clinical ECs. But who know? Maybe one of the ADCOMS on here could better advise. In my mind it's like tutoring.


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[LizzyM]

Let's deconstruct this.... you are interacting with a person who is under the care of a psychiatrist (MD or DO, a medical doctor). You consult with the doctor about your interactions with the person under the doctor's care. Now usually we call a person under the doctor's care "patient" and you are very close to the patient and, in fact, speaking, listening and interacting with the goal of meeting clinical goals. Sounds pretty "clinical" to me.