<p>Hey I just finished my freshman year as a premed student and was looking at a few options for the summer a couple months back. I was wanting to either do an internship in a lab or volunteer at the hospital. I ended up getting a paid internship at a local top-rated medical school (that I want to attend) doing neuroscience research. But the three volunteer positions I applied for all told me they wanted a longer commitment (longer than just two months) since they would have to train me. </p>
<p>My question is, how do I get clinical experience when I cannot get it in the summer? And I prefer doing internships in the summer as not only do I have the possibility of getting paid, I do more challenging and intellectually stimulating work. I have read that a lot of individuals just end up filing medical records and such and that it can get very boring. Should I just try to get volunteering experience during the school year? The problem then is that I have schoolwork but I guess I would have to make it fit somehow.</p>
<p>To most people, clinical experience = shadowing. That means following an MD around and just observing. You’re not going to get paid for that and that’s something that’s best to set up as a more longitudinal experience (e.g. you spend a half day with the guy every week for a while). I would also recommend shadowing people in different specialties because the various specialties can be drastically different from each other and you don’t want to get turned off of medicine just because you followed the wrong type of doc around.</p>
<p>Research exists on a spectrum from basic science to clinical. Clinical research involves studying patients. Sometimes it’s in person, sometimes it’s just records, depends on what the study is. As an undergrad, you’re right, your participation here is often limited since you are not an MD. You can enroll patients, you can be taught to do some chart reviews, you can do data analysis if you have the stats knowledge, but there’s not much else you can do nor is there much else to do. On the other end you have basic science where you’re pipetting or PCRing or ELISAing or whatever the research is. Maybe there are patient samples but you’re almost certainly not interacting with patients and you may very well be surrounded by PhDs. I said this is a spectrum, so a lab or research group can fall anywhere between those. You can end up with research for just a summer, but you learned a valuable lesson which is that the shorter you’re willing to commit, the less valuable a commodity you are because of how long training you can take.</p>
<p>Shadowing should be very easy to pull off during the year, research can be done if you make time for it but you’ll have to look for positions that allow you to balance your school work (i.e. not full time and often not paid). For the summer, you can see if your school offers any sort of stipend or research funding program. For example, where I went to college, the school offered grants to cover living expenses for the summer. This allowed faculty to take on students for free while providing students with enough money to afford to eat and sublet an apartment.</p>
<p>I think there’s a little confusion between shadowing and clinical volunteering here.</p>
<p>As the previous poster said, shadowing is usually longitudinal and not a huge time commitment (a few hours a week or every other week).</p>
<p>Clinical volunteering is what I think the original poster was asking about. This is when you volunteer in a clinical setting (such as a hospital). You’re right, many students end up filing papers and so forth. However, if you really commit to the experience and volunteer for an extended period, you can often move to a different part of the hospital once a spot opens up (maybe in the ER or something similar). Do your best to try and get in an area where you’ll at least come into contact with patients so it will be a meaningful experience. You can commit to volunteer at a hospital for as little as a few hours a week or maybe even 2 shifts a month. Doing it this way and not trying to cram all of your volunteering hours into the summer can actually help your application quite a bit. It shows a commitment to your work rather than just checking volunteering off your list of requirements for med school. So in short, find out the minimum amount of time per month you can sign up for. If it fits your school schedule, go for it.</p>
<p>^I think iwannabebrown is making a different point though. He’s saying that most people consider shadowing to be clinical experience (eg I would be one of those people), that most shadowing occurs during the school year, and that most shadowing experiences are unpaid (so in a sense, might be considered volunteer if volunteer=uncompensated).</p>
<p>Volunteering at a hospital is another form of clinical experience. For whatever reason, many students find this to be unfulfilling because it often involves mundane tasks such as filing papers. Surely it would be more valuable if one followed the suggestions in #4, about making it a longitudinal experience and about trying to make the most of it. </p>
<p>It’s worth noting that volunteering doesn’t have to be in a hospital. In fact, many of my classmates (myself included) have never volunteered in a hospital. If something else really resonates with you, do that! Maybe you like elderly folks (nursing home?) or young kids (after school program? Tutoring?) or refugees (ESL classes?) or folks living in poverty (homeless shelter?) or helping victims of domestic violence (shelter?)–regardless, you should be able to find a way to volunteer with a group you care about. And (maybe I’m crazy) I think it’s definitely better to do something you truly care about than to just do something to put it on your med school resume. </p>
<p>D. did everything during school year. Everything was much easier to obtain than in our home town. She worked, volunteered, had Med. Research intenship, all multi-year commitments. The benefit of it also, all kind of awards at graduation, great LOR’s from all kind of supervisors (who are also profs and even deans), various other rcognitions and even money award. She did a bit of shadowing and volunteering in her summers, they were very very hard to obtain, took her hours every day for many days to find anything at all as we have waiting lists for some volunteering positions. You can only try and do not give up. But her most serious and long commitments were at her college.<br>
Best wishes, do your best and do not forget to enjoy your summers!</p>