Experience in Healthcare

I want to get some experience in healthcare before I apply to any med-schools…what are some good options for someone who has always worked on the business-side of things??

EMT


Medical assistant

Check with the pre-med club at your school to see what sort of volunteer (or paid) positions they’ve got access to. This is sometimes a good source for the sort of networking connections that make a big difference in getting experience.


Your medical experience can be as a volunteer - lots of people on here have done that. Check with local hospitals, clinics for uninsured, hospice, etc. - places where you can be sure that they need help. Try to tactfully steer yourself toward a position where you’ll be helping with patient care, not delivering flowers.


Mary

In my opinion, a specific job where you’re treating patients yourself such as a CNA, EMT, etc. is going to be the biggest benefit to you…that being said, I would /not/ recommend doing EMT just to say you have clinical experience to adcoms due to the fact that it’s 4-5 months (1 semester) of training and then you have to jump through a crapload of more hoops such as getting your national registry cert, any local certs you may need, physical and immunizations before even taking the class, the class itself is a big time commitment, etc.


If you just want something to put down as clinical experience on your AMCAS, I would say medical assistant or a hospital volunteer gig that doesn’t suck would be your best bet.

Hospice volunteering can be a very nice option, also.

does it help to say i was exposed to medicine through my father (a gen surgeon) growing up? i also worked at a psychiatric hospital for 3 months (my first job ever before i got married at the age of 19)…and i worked for a non-profit organization for doctors and allied health professionals for a year (so no direct contact with patients)…


keep in mind, i got married when i just turned 19, had my first child when i was 20, my second child at 22, and have been working full-time since i was 19.5 and going to school full time the past 2 years (just finished my bachelors…yay!!)…so, i didn’t have much time between work, school, and family to do much volunteering in hospitals…


will the ADCOMs consider all this?