Questions about experiences section

[chemistry hahgdgjjhdf]

Hey everyone, applications are coming out in a few weeks and I was wanting to ask a few questions about how to classify some of my experiences and whether others are clinical or not. I have gotten opinions on two of my experiences before but that was awhile ago so I wanted new opinions and old ones. I have been researching a lot more so even I have changed my thoughts about how to classify some of my experiences. I have questions about three experiences. I would like to figure out information on these experiences so I can start to write drafts about them since I know the experience section takes a lot of time on the application.

Experiences:

1st experience: I was a personal support worker for my cousin that has severe spastic Cerebral Palsy for my first two years of college. He was not able to do anything so I was in charge of his ADL's such as brushing, dressing, bathing, diaper changing, etc. Other responsibilities were administering his food and medicine through his GI tube as well as catheterization because he was unable to empty his bladder on his own. I also occasionally gave him breathing treatments. He had different illnesses due to his condition. He would get sick a good amount. I learned a lot from this experience and this planted the "seed" that eventually became my passion for wanting to pursue medicine.

So, I emailed three medical schools that I really want to attend and all three said that this was great clinical experience and I should classify it as that. The AAMC on their page also says that being a caretaker is one of five ways to get clinical experience. The personal support worker title I had I feel is just a more complex name for caretaker. Does all this information verify that I can classify this as clinical experience on my application?

2nd experience: I worked as a student worker in my university's clinic. To be specific it was in the urgent care part of the school's clinic. At any given time, there was a physician, a medical assistant, at least two nurses, and about 2 NPs. I would go into the patient's room and ask them questions like alcohol use/drug use and if they had a mental illness. I do not considered this experience clinical but I do not know how to classify this. Is it just paid non-clinical employment?

3rd experience: I am currently a caregiver. I have done this for about 5 months now. I know that this may be the most controversial experience. My duties include assisting the elderly people with all ADL's. I also have to apply medication to rashes all over their body as well as care for their bed sores. All the elderly people that I care for are on hospice. They have conditions such as organ failure, but mostly cancer. I care for them in their home, or in senior living communities. For all the people I help, I meet with a hospice nurse on a weekly basis. I provide them with any changes in their condition or any other problems. The hospice nurses also give me instructions if anything new has been added to the treatment plan and will run down the treatment plan with me.

I believe that this experience is clinical. I have listened to various premed podcasts especially the one by Dr. Ryan Gray. These podcasts have said that caregiving is great clinical experience based on what you are doing. I feel that I do enough in my caregiving job for it to be classified as clinical experience. Also, I feel like the AAMC caretaker title applies to caregiving also as they are super similar.

These are the three main experiences that I do not know how to classify for the experiences section. I also have about 35 hours of shadowing which I am going to continue after this COVID-19 pandemic and almost 110 hours of nonclinical that I am working on as I am lucky enough to be currently volunteering at my local homeless shelter. I just want to hear opinions about these three experiences. I feel I have done enough research to be able to classify the first and third experiences as clinical. I am more lost on how to classify the second one. Thank you for your time and your advice!

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[fjeowpij]

In my opinion, all 3 experiences can be classified as clinical. A simple rule of thumb is if you interact with patients, it's most likely a clinical experience. I would definitely classify the 2nd experience as a clinical one; you worked in a clinic and you helped patients in some way.

 

[datboi_58]

All 3 can be classified as clinical. At the end of the day, it’s not all black and white. Some things can be both clinical and non-clinical because a job can involve both aspects. There are some programs where even employment / volunteering get blurred. First and foremost, be honest and as long as you’re doing that, I would use this nuance as an advantage. For example, I worked in one place for a total of 400 hours where I did research half the time and volunteering the other half. I had space in my application so I split that single experience and put it down as two different experiences: 200 hours for research and 200 hours for clinical volunteering. Anyone who read my app could clearly see that both of those experiences were under the same company and occurred during the same timeframe. I was never once asked about it and am now attending med school in the fall.

 

[chemistry hahgdgjjhdf]

In my opinion, all 3 experiences can be classified as clinical. A simple rule of thumb is if you interact with patients, it's most likely a clinical experience. I would definitely classify the 2nd experience as a clinical one; you worked in a clinic and you helped patients in some way.

Okay, thank you for your opinion. I will add all 3 as clinical experience then. Any advice when drafting the descriptions for the experiences?

 

[chemistry hahgdgjjhdf]

All 3 can be classified as clinical. At the end of the day, it’s not all black and white. Some things can be both clinical and non-clinical because a job can involve both aspects. There are some programs where even employment / volunteering get blurred. First and foremost, be honest and as long as you’re doing that, I would use this nuance as an advantage. For example, I worked in one place for a total of 400 hours where I did research half the time and volunteering the other half. I had space in my application so I split that single experience and put it down as two different experiences: 200 hours for research and 200 hours for clinical volunteering. Anyone who read my app could clearly see that both of those experiences were under the same company and occurred during the same timeframe. I was never once asked about it and am now attending med school in the fall.

Thank you for your reply! I can see what you mean about something being both and I feel that my second experience can be blurred. Any advice on what I should or should not have in my descriptions on my experience section?

 

[fjeowpij]

Okay, thank you for your opinion. I will add all 3 as clinical experience then. Any advice when drafting the descriptions for the experiences?

What it is, what you did, and what you learned. If you cover all 3 aspects, you should be fine.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Thank you for your reply! I can see what you mean about something being both and I feel that my second experience can be blurred. Any advice on what I should or should not have in my descriptions on my experience section?

Just discuss what you did and keep it objective. Don't embellish it with how it changed your life or other fluff, since the description has a pretty short character limit. If you are considering it one of your most meaningful experiences, that's where you would talk about something like that.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[chemistry hahgdgjjhdf]

Just discuss what you did and keep it objective. Don't embellish it with how it changed your life or other fluff, since the description has a pretty short character limit. If you are considering it one of your most meaningful experiences, that's where you would talk about something like that.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

So the description is more vague whereas the most meaningful experience is more descriptive and reflective?

 

[chemistry hahgdgjjhdf]

What it is, what you did, and what you learned. If you cover all 3 aspects, you should be fine.

Awesome, thank you for your help!

 

[datboi_58]

Thank you for your reply! I can see what you mean about something being both and I feel that my second experience can be blurred. Any advice on what I should or should not have in my descriptions on my experience section?

Don’t overthink it. Just put down your responsibilities and what you learned. If you have space, you can talk about something deeper but save that mostly more the meaningful experiences and personal statement.

If you’re splitting your one single, blurred experience into two, just don’t double dip your hours. For example, let’s say you decided to split your second experience into two: one for clinical employment and another for non-clinical employment. If you worked a total for 100 hours, the total of the two experiences you put down should be 100 (you can do 50/50 or 75/25 or whatever you feel is accurate). And put down your clinical responsibilities in the clinical employment and the non-clinical responsibilities in the non-clinical employment.

Again, the way to use the nuance to your advantage, as long as the nuance is based in reality, is to diversify your app. One very simple example is scribing. Most schools require or highly recommend shadowing for 50-100 hours. Let’s say you haven’t done any shadowing but you’ve got a 1000 hours of scribing. This situation might not be a problem for most schools but there could be a school that potentially automatically screens out all applications without shadowing experience. So to be safe, take 100 hours of that scribing experience and list it as shadowing. You can put the other 900 as paid clinical employment. Shadowing is a minimum requirement and having more than a 100 hours generally doesn’t mean anything, but higher hours look better for other activities such as employment and especially for volunteering. So no need to split scribing into 500 hours shadowing and 500 hours employment.