Meaningful Clinical Experience

[BackpacksMadeByJanSport]

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Hey Everyone! How many hours of meaningful clinical experience is enough? I've been volunteering as an EMT for the past three years for about 11hrs per week, but only racked up about 150 hours in pt. contact. When applying, do I put down my weekly shift I volunteer (b/c this does include community engagement and public health awareness) or do I have to specify how many calls I've been on and pt. contact hours?

 

[MrLogan13]

Hours per week. The goal isn't to accumulate X number of hours, it's to gain a meaningful experience that informs your decision to enter this field. If you've been doing 11 hours per week for 3 years then that is plenty.

 

[LizzyM]

There are people who have volunteered in emergency departments and spent most of their time shelving supplies and climbing stairs to deliver samples to the lab, etc., in other words, not direct patient contact. They count all their volunteer hours even if only 10% of the effort was face-time with patients. You should do the same.

 

[ridethecliche]

Interviewers can call you out on that apparently though.

I had one hardass interviewer that was determined to make me look like a liar and description of one of my clinical experiences was one of the things he did that for.

 

[songl4a]

.

 

[alphamine]

11 hrs/wk * 52 wks/yr * 3 yrs = 1,716 hours in 3 years.

 

[ridethecliche]

How did you reply?

In retrospect: poorly.

Should have asked for his definition of a clinical experience and worked forward from there.

 

[songl4a]

.

 

[LizzyM]

How do AdComs view this?

They see dates, number of hours, the name of the activity, the location, and what the applicant says about the experience. How should they view it?? No physician is seeing patients during every minute of every work day, either.

 

[wegotthis14]

Hey, I just logged into my AMCAS for the 2014-2015 cycle and you have to fill out the following information for each EC:

Experience Type* (ex: community service/volunteering)
Experience Name*
Start and End Dates* (month and year)
Total Hours
Organization Name
Country
City
Contact's First and Last Name*
Contact's Title*
Contact's Email Address and Phone #

Experience Description (700 or fewer characters)
Meaningful Summary (only applies if you mark this EC 1 of your 3 most meaningful experiences; 1325 or fewer characters)

*= required

I know that in previous years, you had to report the number of hours per week instead of total hours, so it might change cycle to cycle. Good luck!