Does this count as shadowing/clinical experience..?

[ll16]

Hey everyone! So I recently graduated undergrad this year, and plan on applying to medical school for the first time next cycle. In the interim, I've been extremely lucky to land a full-time, paid position (which might influence my question) as a clinical research coordinator and tissue technician at a great hospital in Chicago for the next two years.

As part of the job, I'm in the procedure room with the physicians in my department while they operate (usually for 5-6 hours a day) and have constant patient interaction throughout the day. When application time comes around next June, I was wondering if I would be able to log some of these experiences as part of shadowing/clinical exposure.

I have a good amount of shadowing/clinical experience outside of this, but I was curious if I would be able to count these aspects of my job towards these categories.

Any insight is appreciated!

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[KinesiologyNerd]

It's not shadowing if you're paid to do it.

 

[LizzyM]

It is employment. You describe what the job entails. The adcom can see that you have interacted with patients and that you have had some limited exposure to what physicians do (you have not seen them in some of the other settings in which they practice other than procedure rooms -- you might want to shadow docs in outpatient settings (on your own time) and see if you can get someone to bring you along to some free CME sessions such as grand rounds or clinical pathological conferences to see some of the life-long learning that is part of a medical practice.

If you think about it as being exposed to some of the aspects of a career in medicine rather than treating it as a set of check boxes, you should do fine.

 

[ll16]

@LizzyM Thank you very much for the insight! I've been keeping my foresight experienced-based which I've been enjoying instead of just going though the motions to get requirements out of the way (which I think is bad news bears for pre-meds), but I wasn't sure if I would have to specifically distinguish between each of them come application time.

I've been contacting physicians about adding to my shadow experience, but the advice on trying to attend a conference or rounds is some great advice that I haven't thought of before.