Your Pre-Med Priorities: How to Find Clinical Experiences for Your Gap Year(s)

If you've already graduated and are taking a gap year or two, you can find summer and full- and part-time pre-med research assistant gigs that require a BA on job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, etc. You can find work as a medical scribe in these regular job listings too. EMT programs are a pipeline to EMT jobs, ditto CNA programs to CNA jobs. The Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs maintains a list of accredited paramedic programs. (Just bear in mind that becoming a paramedic is more intense than becoming an EMT.) You can also try the following:

1. Use your club contacts. If you're a member of your college's pre-med club, you have access to some alumni and/or guest speakers who are interested in helping prospective doctors. If they can't let you shadow or work for them because of their schedule or because their specialty doesn't match up with your goals, they may recommend someone for you to contact or even give you an email intro. Go Greek too. If you're a member of a sorority or fraternity, your organization may be able to set you up with a physician alumnus who is eager to help. 

2. Call a volunteer center. Sometimes a cold call is the way to go. Free clinics tend to be understaffed and are therefore aching to be your clinical experience. But they might not have a job posting up online. Call or email them and ask if they need volunteers. For a hospital volunteer center, go with: "I'm a pre-med student at (or recent graduate from) ABC University. I'd love to speak with someone about shadowing a physician and a volunteer position. I'm most interested in X, but I'm open to all opportunities." Academic affiliated hospitals are probably your best bets. 

3. Connect with a local physician for shadowing. Reach out to someone who specializes in an area you're interested in and is hopefully close to campus. (It would be ideal to shadow them multiple times.) You can call or email their office or direct message them on LinkedIn. Younger doctors are going to be more familiar with shadowing because they did it. Ask your own doctor about shadowing too. Yep, you're really hitting up any doctor who you know. 

4. Sign up for virtual shadowing. There are third-party organizations who can hook you up with a virtual opportunity. If you have other, more substantial clinical experiences, this is just going to be a bonus to your application. Virtual shadowing should not be your sole clinical experience. (It can be your sole shadowing experience.) Virtual can be great if you want to follow a physician with a certain specialty and can't seem to lock down a local one. Just remember, virtual group sessions tend to be large, so you're not going to get one-on-one mentorship.

Related:

Your Pre-Med Priorities: Gain Clinical Experiences

Your Pre-Med Priorities: Clinical Experiences that Medical Schools Love

Your Pre-Med Priorities: Finding Clinical Experiences as an Undergraduate