I volunteer at a nursing home. I extensively interact with patients. I provide companionship, assist them in playing board games (with other residents (since many of them can't play on their own), clip & paint their nails, and style their hair. What additional information should I provide for these activities to count as clinical experience on a TMDSAS application?
What volunteering activities in a nursing home count as clinical experience?
- Thread starter PL417
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I consider it so, but others may disagree.
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Here's the thing about nursing homes.... they are homes. The people there are residents, not patients. They are receiving supervision with their activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, walking) and/or their instrumental activities of daily living (shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc) because they are disabled in some way (cognitively and/or physically). So, they aren't receiving clinical services on a daily basis in most cases (aside from being administered pills, and perhaps an insulin injection, by a nurse). So, how is this different than a person who is seeing a doctor and being questioned about symptoms, being ordered to undergo tests and being provided information about diagnosis and treatment.
Spending time with the disabled is good experience for a clinical role, as many of the people who physicians care for have disabilities, but being in a nursing home is, in my opinion, not being in a clinical setting unless you have a physical hands-on role as a patient care technician (in which case the word patient is in your title and that's a more "patient" oriented thing as is done in the hospital -- bathing the patient, safely getting them to and from the bathroom, etc).
Spending time with the disabled is good experience for a clinical role, as many of the people who physicians care for have disabilities, but being in a nursing home is, in my opinion, not being in a clinical setting unless you have a physical hands-on role as a patient care technician (in which case the word patient is in your title and that's a more "patient" oriented thing as is done in the hospital -- bathing the patient, safely getting them to and from the bathroom, etc).
Hollow Knight
Effort beats talent
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I honestly don't see how this is much different than me reading books/ sitting and talking with hospice patients. And all the schools I applied to seemed to like that (it was during Covid though, maybe the bar was low)
The difference is all the people I was around were actually dying of something terminal, and most of them were in skill care facilities (people with sacral wounds, cancer, etc)
The difference is all the people I was around were actually dying of something terminal, and most of them were in skill care facilities (people with sacral wounds, cancer, etc)
