Clinical Experiences

What to look for in a clinical experience - thoughts from your PreHealth advisors:

The St. Louis region has an abundance of volunteer opportunities that can fulfill your desire to serve, help you explore your career interests, and support an application to professional school. As you explore these opportunities consider the following questions to guide your decision on where to serve.

  • Does the opportunity touch on your passions and interests? Getting the most out of an experience usually happens when the work taps you innate interests and abilities. Take a close look at the organizations that match your core values.
  • Does the experience offer opportunities to serve and directly interact with patients/clients? Experiences that have you stocking medical supply closets and prepping patient rooms are important and perhaps good for beginning to build your collegiate service history. However, it is important to eventually progress to volunteer positions that place you in direct contact with patients. Through such experiences you can begin to build nuanced interpersonal skills that professional schools will be looking for when you apply to graduate programs in healthcare.
  • Does the experience allow you to see providers in practice? It is not crucial, but definitely value added if the volunteer role provides opportunities to see professionals (nurses, doctors, physician assistants) providing care to patients. Such observations provide opportunities to add new skills for interacting with patients to your toolbox. Many of the organizations listed in this guide will provide opportunities to watch professionals in action; for others (like hospice caregiver relief) such opportunities may be limited.

 

How to get the most out of your clinical experience:

  • Keep a notebook – We highly recommend that you dedicate a notebook to your clinical explorations. On the most practical level, it can be a place to track the dates and hours committed to each pursuit. But it is also very useful to jot down your thoughts and observations. Consider writing about what you learned from each volunteering shift. These could be insights into an illness or injury, moments when you had a palpable impact on a patient’s experience, approaches to working with distressed patients through witnessing specific provider-patient interactions, or inspiring moments that confirmed your desire to pursue a career in healthcare. These reflections will be very helpful raw materials to draw from later when you are developing the written components of your professional school applications.
  • Competencies – As you approach your application to professional school, we will prompt you to think about the medical school competencies, and ultimately the medical schools you apply to will want to know which competencies are your strongest and how you have worked to develop them through your academics and clinical explorations. Keep these in mind as you are volunteering and look for 3 opportunities to develop them further. Consider how your competencies are utilized and developed through your volunteering, and record your thoughts on them in your volunteer notebook
  • Logistic considerations – Transportation is an important factor to consider as you review the accessibility of each experience via walking, car, or public transportation. If your transportation options are limited, consider narrowing your choices. Likewise, you must also review vaccination requirements. Organizations will require vaccinations if the volunteer role puts you in direct contact with patients. Requirements are often listed on the linked volunteer pages for each organization. They typically include covid-19 and flu vaccinations, and tuberculosis (TB) tests are required as well.

Volunteer Opportunities for PreHealth Students

Browse a comprehensive list of current volunteer shadowing opportunities for PreHealth students in St. Louis.

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Common Questions

Is shadowing considered clinical experience?

When you ultimately apply to medical school shadowing experiences are logged in a different category than clinical volunteering because shadowing is essentially observational and usually does not involve much direct patient interaction. Shadowing should not be considered a substitute for experiences that allow you to directly interact with and serve patients. Shadowing is valuable however; it provides you with a window into the lives of doctors and other health care professionals, facilitates your understanding of how care plans are derived, and can allow you insights into specialties you haven’t seen through other activities. On the whole, medical schools want the bulk of your activity hours invested in experiences that have you directly interacting with patients and developing your soft skills. If those experiences also involve good opportunities to observe doctors in action, separate shadowing pursuits may not be strictly necessary. A few days of shadowing with a doctor, though, can be a great way to get exposure to specialties you might not otherwise experience. Keep in mind that your prehealth advisor is available to discuss how shadowing might fit into your resume for professional school applications.

Is it OK to get my clinical experience through working?

Some students do pursue paid work in clinical settings in roles such as medical assistants or medical techs. Such experiences are often pursued during gap years, as clinical work schedules (often involving twelve-hour shifts) can be difficult to squeeze in with full-time academics. Such roles allow students to accumulate relevant clinical hours quickly and provide a depth of experience and responsibility that isn’t typical of volunteer positions. Clinical work is a great way to build your resume for professional school applications. Keep in mind however, that medical schools like to see an ongoing history of service, so ongoing volunteering while working is a good idea.