Hello,
Wanted to sit down and introduce myself. After visiting other forums and then finding this I feel so elated. The responses seem to be supportive and optimistic. Other forum responses are often overly authoritative and thorny when addressing non-trad situations. I’m truly inspired by the stories of people on this forum.
I’m 30 and didn’t consider medicine seriously until a year or two ago. It’s always been a dream of mine. Now, taking a serious look at the path to get to where I want I notice overwhelm at times. I have a bachelors in health and wellness although will need to fulfill the pre-reqs through a post baccaluerate as well as gain healthcare experience which I have none of. I think sometimes I must be crazy.
I don’t know what specialty I would prefer and need to shadow more to determine that. My current plan includes pursuing an EMT-B cert this spring and enrolling in pre-reqs part time this spring and not working or working minimally.
Using the EMT cert. I’ll be able to gain valuable experience in the ED while continuing to take classes and shadow.
Another option is to pursue an accelerated path in nursing for 1 year and then take the pre-reqs. The stability of an income and experience would put me in a good place to know more directly what I want to do in medicine and finish the prereqs from there.
That’s my short intro and glad to share more.
Thanks
I would be careful pursuing the EMT-B or nursing idea. This is because it is the med schools know thats exactly why you are doing it. Since you’re a nontrad you don’t have to worry as much about the experience. You have to show them that you have enough clinical exposure, that you know what you are getting into and that this is what you want as a career. I was told this by one of the med school admissions directors I met with. He said they look for stuff like that, if they think someone did it to “fluff” their application it raises red flags. EMTs also work outside the hospital and usually are only there to drop off a patient and do paperwork, the EMT experience is actually less valuable for premedical exposure than a lot of people realize. You really need to get some shadowing time done, which is hard to do because it’s difficult to find a doctor to allow you to shadow him or her.
I would recommend the shadowing and volunteering in a hospital more than anything, or anything else with patient care. You can also search for research that interests you and send an email to a professor in that line of research to ask about volunteering.
The med schools are looking at you to see what type of life experience you have, that you can handle the academics, that this is what you really want to do, et al.
Of course there is so much more I can tell you but i’ll keep this post short.
Before going out to get that EMT-B cert, be sure that there are jobs out there available that work for you. I got mine and was hoping to work part-time as an EMT while completing my courses. Turns out that my local ambulance service won’t hire newly-minted EMT-Bs on a part-time basis.
I wouldn’t just dismiss the idea if it’s something that you really want to do and are passionate about, and that you’re able to express that to the adcom when the time comes. I think it affords you the opportunity to have a lot of patient contact and work on developing your patient interactions. Plus, the training gets you used to doing a little bit of thinking in terms of medicine.
That said, I think there are a lot of opportunities out there to gain clinical experience that don’t require much in the way of training/certification. For example, one of the local hospitals here hires non-CNA nursing assistants.
Personally, I’m working as a scribe in the ED and we follow the ED docs around as they interview patients and perform the physical examinations and then enter that data in the electronic medical record. It’s a great exposure to medicine, and you get to spend a lot of time interacting with the docs. I had about 2 days of training for this and then they let me go.
- nontradpremed Said:
No, I do have to do it for the experience because I don't have any... and that's what I'd be doing it for not to pad my resume although I'm ok if it looks good.
I've heard EMT's don't get much respect from the ED, though that may be location specific. I'd like to try and get a foot in the ED as a tech and learn firsthand the way things are run.
- bennard Said:
agreed
Find out if there is a local EMS that is volunteer. Being an EMT can give you exposure to medicine but the benefit will be in the clinical years when you have to get information from patients and you are very comfortable doing this due to your EMS work.