Hi,
First, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question.
I have a very strong interest in increasing access to high-quality primary care for underserved populations and over the 2 years since I graduated college, I have worked and volunteered in a variety of settings.
For example, I have done a lot of political advocacy for underserved groups in my city (mostly low-income LGBTQ people and refugees), volunteer at a refugee mental health clinic, volunteer on an urban farming project to improve food access, on projects to support homeless people in recovery, and multiple other smaller things. I am also pursuing an MPH part-time and working full-time. This is not to gloat in any way, but rather to express my deep commitment to medically underserved populations and explain that when application comes next season, I want to make sure I have a plan to sort of craft my experiences in a way that makes sense and conveys this.
Because of my belief that health is intertwined with so many other aspects of a person's life, I have purposefully pursued experiences that allow me to interact with patients both inside and outside of a clearly clinical setting. For that reason, I am concerned about how to represent my amount of "clinical experience" correctly in my application. At the refugee clinic, I interacted with patients coming in to see their psychiatrist by administering mental health questionnaires, distributing toiletries/clothes, and then taking them to other medical appointments, often serving as an advocate or translator during those visits (I am not a certified translator, but a native speaker of another language and patients often requested I stay instead of a translator since they had known me for months - I hope this does not come off as pretentious!). I also helped complete housing and job applications, connected them with additional resources, and accomplished various admin tasks around the office. Is it wise to separate this experience into clinical vs. non-clinical hours, when what makes it so meaningful to me is that I interacted with patients for more than just their medical appointments?
Similarly, I have been working at a pediatric hospital on several QI projects aiming to improve care for pediatric patients with serious chronic conditions. I spend a lot of time in clinic interacting with patients who were coming in for their appointments and administering surveys to better understand their experience dealing with the disease and all the burden that comes with it. However, a lot of my time is also spent doing data entry and attending meetings with clinical staff and not with patients. Similar question as above, when crafting my application, does it make sense to break down those hours in clinical vs. non-clinical?
I understand it's a little bit too soon to be thinking about next year, but as I am trying to do some introspective work regarding what has kept me going on the path to becoming a physician, I rarely seems to fit the sometimes small boxes on the application form!
Thank you so much.
