<p>I've been reading this board for a while now, but this is my first post. I'm a high school senior right now, and I had some questions about gaining clinical exposure. This year, since my school is a magnet program for medical science, I spent 5 months interning at the local hospital with the time being divided between ER, neonatology, orthopedic surgery, and pediatrics. It was a great experience, and one that generally lent itself to true clinical exposure. However, the entire time I was there I saw people who were "volunteering, to gain clinical exposure," that were essentially just running errands and not getting any real exposure. My question is, what is a good way of going about getting the much-coveted exposure. I guess that I'm afraid of just volunteering and getting stuck running errands. </p>
<p>That's pretty much what most volunteering is. The key is to talk to the nurses and ask them questions as best you can. The other thing is to try and talk to patients if you have the chance, just chat with them, most of the eldery men have great stories and are glad to have someone talk to. The key is in the interview for applying - really sell the high points as fantastic and ignore the errand running besides a quick mention.</p>
<p>Clinical experience means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so it's all about how you sell the experience.</p>
<p>This summer, post freshman year, my son worked out an internship with a pathology group. Of course, little patient exposure, but they will allow him to view pathology slides, stand in on autopsies, learn about the variety of lab tests performed and learn to prepare specimens. He is really looking forward to seeing this side of medicine.</p>
<p>First, if you can have a group of premeds shadowing the same group of doctors on a whole-day basis, it will be much more of an educational experience. Of course, it's also more of a burden on the physician.</p>
<p>Second, if you can participate in an international trip of some kind - see if DWB offers opportunities for premeds, for example - then that frees you to participate much more widely. I, for example, got a chance to perform a minor surgery while in Southern Mexico.</p>
<p>Third, my personal experience has involved a lot of patient contact and very little contact with health professionals. I've done a couple of photography projects in, for example, the cancer wards.</p>