Shadowing involves spending time with a physician or other healthcare provider as they see patients or conduct their daily activities. This is a great way to gain a realistic view of the profession. While we encourage you to shadow healthcare professionals, this alone is not considered adequate preparation for most health professional schools so you should plan for this to be just one component of your clinical engagement.

Many clinics and hospitals have volunteer programs you can join. The actual work you do varies greatly with different levels of patient interaction. However, you can still learn a great deal about the culture of a clinical setting and the teamwork involved. You can also ask the healthcare professionals for advice, opinions and suggestions for you as someone who wants a healthcare career.

If you have certification in one of these areas, you can work directly with patients and provide care. While the level of care you can provide is likely very different from the care you will provide in your future career, the skills of working with patients are often the same. These types of roles will also help you determine if a career taking care of patients is one that will be fulfilling.

A scribe is someone who works with doctors as they meet with patients and takes notes for the physician. This role will allow you to have a realistic view of the day-to-day life of a physician and gain an understanding of how they interact with patients. In some scribing roles you may also have more patient interaction which will provide you with an opportunity to learn more about how to communicate and work with patients.

Clinical research experiences vary greatly depending on the type of research and your specific role in the research. In some clinical research roles, you are working solely with data and have no patient interaction. This would not typically be considered a clinical experience. However, in other clinical research roles, you are working directly with the patients to complete consent forms, assist them in understanding the project, or walk them through the experiment. In this case, the experience would be considered a clinical experience. 

There are often opportunities to work with individuals with medical needs outside of the clinical setting. This could be working with hospice patients, camps for children diagnosed with chronic conditions, spending time with those diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's, and many more. While these may not be direct clinical experiences, they can help you develop the skills you need to work with individuals with medical needs.

Yes. If you are applying to attend a health profession school with the goal of a career in healthcare, you will need to have clinical experience when you apply. This is important for you so that you know that this career is the right fit for you. It is also important for the admissions committees to see that you have spent time in the clinical environment and have a realistic view of the career you have chosen.

Health professions schools do not have a set number of clinical hours that are required. They expect you to have some diversity of experiences (observation and patient interaction) and have enough time in these to have a solid understanding of the work of a healthcare professional as well as the ability to interact with patients.

Most health professions schools do not have a list of experiences that they specifically define as clinical. It is up to you to consider the experiences you have had and determine if you feel they either provided you with patient interaction or allowed you to observe professionals in your chosen career. The health professions schools are much more concerned with what you learned in the experience than the definition or title of the role.

We have provided you with a list of local opportunities and also post weekly updates of any opportunities that we find. You can also search for hospitals and clinics in your home area if you are home over breaks to see if there are opportunities there. You may need to consider some types of certification if you want direct patient care as you will not be able to treat patients with no training in the field.

This can be quite difficult as physicians are very busy and many hospitals and clinics have rules about who can be in the facility or interact with patients. We recommend that you start with any physicians you might know. This could be your childhood pediatrician, your current physician, the physician that treats your family members or anyone you might know. Reach out to them directly to see if they would be willing to allow you to shadow them. You can also ask for an informational interview instead to see if they are willing to meet to talk about their career path. This might get you started on building a relationship with a physician that could lead to other opportunities.