Clincial experience and career planning

[TonyNotPhony]

Hi, 

I am a second year student majoring in Bio Sci. I'm trying to plan out my schedule for the next 3 years. My first question is, does volunteering count as clinical experience? I know that shadowing and getting certified as an EMT or CNA count as clinical experiences. This leads to my next question. What clinician experience would you guys recommend in terms of gaining experience? EMT seems pretty stressful compared to other ones. I am also trying to balance my academics and extracurricular as well. Would be helpful if someone can give recommendations/suggestion on what I should do other than keeping up my grades (decent) and continuing in a research lab (Ophthalmology). Thank you! 

[pastudentw]

Some schools may accept volunteering as direct patient care hours. Although I think the majority specify that it might be paid direct patient care experience. Best to look at the list of schools you plan on applying to and see what they prefer. Along with that, some programs will or will not count patient care hours you accrued while achieving some other certification so be aware of that.

As far as what patient care jobs to go for, there are tons of variables. Try to pick which factors are most important to you (schedule, pay, clinical setting, amount of time to get the cert, etc.) and see which choices work best. Then make sure there are plenty of available jobs in your area for that particular position.

The best patient care positions in my opinion are those that you directly lay your hands on the patient and have a direct influence over their care while being as autonomous as possible. Whatever you can do to optimize those things will be a great choice. The most common positions are CNA, MA, EMT etc. But there are tons of tech jobs out there. Things that would require a higher certification but could be considered better experience would be RN, RT, paramedic etc.

Inpatient locations will be your best bet in my opinion as far as schedule goes just because it will offer a wide variety of shifts to work around your class schedule.

Hopefully this helps.