Does Contact Tracing Count as Clinical Experience?

Session 136

There are lots of new ways to get clinical experience, but how do you know which one counts for medical schools? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

Listen to this podcast episode with the player above, or keep reading for the highlights and takeaway points.

The episodes in this podcast are recordings of our Facebook Live that we do at 3 pm Eastern on most weekdays. Check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you have any questions, call me at 617-410-6747.

[00:23] Question of the Day

“Due to COVID, it’s difficult to get clinical experience at this time. I am working as a COVID disease investigator, which is very similar to contact tracing. We usually call the COVID positive patients and interview them about their symptoms.

We ask them if they have pre-existing medical conditions, any recent travels and their recent contacts. We then reach out to the contacts and ask them about their symptoms. Then we ask them to isolate or quarantine. So I was wondering if it would be considered a clinical experience?”

[01:02] Is it Clinical or Not?

There are so many new and different activities popping up here in this COVID time that so many students are just wondering if it’s clinical or not. Basically, you can put whatever you want, and let the medical schools decide.

'At the end of the day, it's going to be up to you to determine – is it clinical, or is it not?'Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, this process is always going to be dependent on the medical school. And so with COVID contact tracing, you’re going to have some medical school admissions committees and admission members understand what that is, and love it. And you’re also going to have other people who are not sure about what you’re doing, and really not appreciate it as much as maybe they should.

And so, I would mark it as clinical and let the medical schools decide whether it is or it isn’t clinical experience.

We have the same argument all the time with patient transport. Some medical schools like it, some don’t. Being a pharmacy technician, I personally don’t think it’s clinical yet students put it as clinical. And so, at the end of the day, you mark what you want. And the medical schools will adjudicate it in the end.

[03:22] Writing Activity Descriptions

A lot of times, when I talk about how to write activity descriptions, people go a little bit too far into the storytelling. They don’t help explain something that may need a little explanation.

Scribing probably doesn’t need an explanation, as well as being an EMT. But contact tracer probably needs a little bit of an explanation before you can potentially get into impact and the story or however else you want to talk about that.

[04:02] Rewriting Activity Descriptions for Reapplicants

Q: “For anyone reapplying, I was wondering if you would suggest they rewrite their activities section?”

A: As much as possible rewrite what you can. Whether that’s personal statements, secondaries, activity descriptions, disadvantaged essays, tweak as much as you can.

Does that mean it completely changes? No, not necessarily. But massage it a little bit. Try to come at it from a different angle or maybe a deeper reflection. You’re a year older now or however many years older, depending on last time you applied. And so, you have more wisdom and more life experience to reflect on the experiences that you wrote about. Therefore, tweak as much as you can.

“Tweak as much as you can.”Click To Tweet

[04:59] MCAT Prep

When I asked this student why she struggled the first time she took the MCAT, she said she focused on content review and she wasn’t doing a lot of the practice tests.

Her MCAT test date got canceled five times during COVID. And so, based on her actual MCAT score, it dropped by 10 plus points. And so she was actually wondering if anxiety or stress played a role in that too.

So our student did five practice exams, two from Blueprint MCAT, and two from AAMC instead of the four AAMC ones. I definitely recommend doing all the AAMC full-length exams. Blueprint MCAT has the second best exams. It’s also a very common mistake that students make that they focus so much on content review.

Theoretically, if you’ve done well in your classes, you shouldn’t need to do as much content review. Just use your full-length exams to review and guide your content review in between full-length.

'A 10-point drop from what you're getting on your full length to your actual test could be a lot of things.'Click To Tweet

There’s a lot of stress and anxiety that go into taking the MCAT. So make sure in your full-length practice tests that you’re wearing a mask, just to simulate that real environment as much as possible. Well, hopefully, her second time is better.