Question about *unique* Clinical Experience

[NYGirl12]

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I know that the clinical experience questions must've been asked 5 million times, but I was just wondering about a couple of things since my experience is quite different from the majority that's been asked here.

I have about 800 hours of clinical experience, all of it done while volunteering abroad. The bulk of it was right after I graduated from college (40-50 hrs/week, May until August this year) before I started my job in Sept. The rest were during my freshman and sophomore years on short two-week volunteering trips to the same country.

My question is: Does it matter that all of my clinical experience is abroad? Also, does it matter that almost all of my clinical experience, while high in hours, is from one summer? I had a fantastic experience volunteering in an underserved community and this has greatly influenced my decision to choose a career in medicine.

I had way too much going on during my undergrad that I didn't have time to volunteer at my university's hospital. Well, that and most of the pre-med volunteers at the hospital, at least ours, get stuck with paper work, showing people where to go, etc.. which for me didn't seem all that helpful in terms of exposure to clinical things and medicine itself.

Any thoughts?

 

[Anka]

Just to admit my biases up front, the idea that premeds must volunteer at all is just absurd. There are plenty of people who get into med school without that. Your experiences, however, will prob be a lot more interesting to talk about during your interview -- which as a student interviewer means a lot to me.

That said, the thing you may be asked to comment on during your interview is how you're going to deal with the American health care system. The main causes of dissatisfaction among physicians are paperwork, beurocracy, lawsuits, dealing with insurance, etc... so are you aware enough of the degree to which that exists to at least be able to comment on your ability to tolerate it? You don't need to volunteer to have a sense; just talk to any of the many dissatisfied MDs out there.

Anka

 

[OldFolkDoc]

You should be just fine, so long as you express great interest in either:

-international medicine/global health, ie. returning to the country that you spent so much time in and working as an MD

or

-comparative health policy... ie. using your experience abroad to highlight the problems you want to help fix in this country

(from a pragmatic point of view, even if neither of these truly apply to you I'd still "spin" your experience in a similar fashion in secondaries and interviews. you don't want to simply say that you know what medicine is and what you're getting into b/c of your abroad experience as you haven't spent much time in the US system).

If you have the chance, shadow an MD in the American system for a few hours (at most 10) just so you have more clinical experience to talk about that is stateside. Best of luck!