Learn how to get clinical experience for medical school from a current medical student with 2,000+ clinical hours. Compare MA, scribe, CNA, EMT, shadowing, volunteering, and more.
Clinical experience was one of the most important parts of my own premed journey, but I started much earlier and much less strategically than you might expect. I did not come from a family in medicine, so when I first started looking for opportunities, I was trying to figure out the same basic questions many premeds have: what actually counts as clinical experience, how do you get a healthcare job when nobody has given you experience yet, how much shadowing do you need, and how are you supposed to convince a physician or clinic to give you that first chance?
I started working in healthcare my senior year of high school and continued working as a medical assistant part-time and during summers throughout college. By the time I applied to medical school, I had accumulated more than 2,000 hours of clinical experience across several settings, including urgent care, a volunteer medical clinic, emergent care, and gastroenterology. I also earned my Certified Clinical Medical Assistant credential and spent substantial time shadowing physicians and other healthcare professionals, which gave me the opportunity to see medicine from both the employee and observer side.
Those experiences eventually became one of the strongest parts of my medical school application, but the number of hours was not the main reason they were valuable. Working directly with patients taught me how different healthcare looks once you are responsible for helping someone who is sick, uncomfortable, frustrated, scared, or simply trying to get through an ordinary appointment. Working closely with physicians also gave me the relationships, mentorship, references, and real-world understanding I needed to explain why I wanted to become a physician rather than choosing medicine because I liked science classes.
Now that I am in medical school, I appreciate those early clinical experiences even more. I already knew what it felt like to take a patient history, obtain vital signs, work inside an EMR, collect laboratory samples, assist with procedures, communicate with patients throughout a busy clinic day, and function as part of a healthcare team before I ever put on a medical student white coat.
That is what this Clinical Experience section of AspiringMD is designed to help you build. Whether you are a high school student looking for your first opportunity, a college student choosing between medical assisting and scribing, a premed struggling to find physician shadowing, or someone who already has a clinical job and wants to turn it into stronger mentorship and future opportunities, you can use this page as your roadmap.
What Counts as Clinical Experience for Medical School?
Clinical experience generally means spending meaningful time in a healthcare environment where you are exposed to patients and begin understanding what patient care actually looks like. The exact responsibilities can vary tremendously, which is why I care much more about what you did and how closely you interacted with patients than whether your job title sounds impressive.
Common clinical experiences include medical assisting, CNA or patient care technician work, EMT, phlebotomy, emergency department technician positions, hospice care, hospital volunteering with genuine patient interaction, home health, clinical research involving direct patient contact, and certain medical scribe positions. Some experiences are much more hands-on than others, but each can teach you something useful when the responsibilities actually put you close to patients and healthcare teams.
The AAMC also encourages premed students to gain real exposure to healthcare through work, volunteering, shadowing, and other medically related experiences. You can explore its official resources for gaining experience in the medical field, but I would not interpret that guidance as a checklist where every applicant needs the exact same job.
The larger purpose is testing whether medicine still makes sense once you have seen healthcare outside a classroom. You should eventually be able to explain what working around patients taught you, what you observed about healthcare teams, and why those experiences strengthened or changed your interest in becoming a physician.
What Does Not Automatically Count as Clinical Experience?
Being physically located inside a hospital or medical office does not automatically make an activity clinical. If you spend your entire shift working in a back office with no patient interaction, the fact that the building contains physicians does not necessarily make your experience equivalent to working directly with patients.
The same distinction can apply to research. I have done a tremendous amount of medical research, but my undergraduate bench research was not clinical experience simply because the scientific questions involved human health. Research and clinical experience can both strengthen your application, but they demonstrate different things.
When you are uncertain, ask yourself whether you are interacting with patients, observing their care closely, supporting a healthcare team in a way connected with patient care, or otherwise learning what it is like to work around people receiving medical treatment. The more your role involves actual patients rather than simply being near medicine, the easier it becomes to understand why the experience belongs in your clinical preparation.
I would also avoid trying to force an activity into the clinical category because you think clinical hours are more valuable. Describe the experience accurately and allow its actual responsibilities to speak for themselves.
Clinical Experience and Shadowing Are Not the Same Thing
This distinction confused me early too because both activities put you around physicians and patients. They overlap, but they answer different questions.
Clinical experience teaches you what it feels like to have a responsibility inside healthcare. You may need to communicate with patients, complete tasks correctly, work efficiently, respond to unexpected situations, interact with coworkers, and continue doing your job even when the clinic is busy or you are tired.
Shadowing is primarily observational. It allows you to focus on what the physician is doing, how they make decisions, how they interact with patients, how their responsibilities differ from everyone else on the team, and whether the daily work actually resembles the career you are imagining.
I had substantial amounts of both, and I am glad I did. My medical assistant experience gave me direct responsibilities around patients, while shadowing allowed me to pay much closer attention to the physician role without needing to simultaneously think about what room needed to be cleaned, which laboratory sample needed to be collected, or which patient I needed to bring back next.
My full Clinical Experience vs. Shadowing for Medical School guide goes much deeper into the distinction and how I would decide whether you need more of one or the other.
Which Matters More: Clinical Experience or Shadowing?
If somebody had extensive physician shadowing but essentially no patient-facing experience, I would generally tell them that meaningful clinical exposure is the larger missing piece. Watching physicians can help you understand medicine, but it does not show you what it feels like when somebody is relying on you within a healthcare environment.
That does not make shadowing unimportant. I would still want enough deliberate physician observation to understand why you want the physician role specifically, particularly when your clinical job does not give you much access to physician decision-making.
The AAMC notes that clinical exposure can come through multiple routes and that traditional physician shadowing is not the only way students can develop an understanding of healthcare. Its guide to alternatives to shadowing is useful if shadowing opportunities are particularly difficult to access where you live.
My personal preference is still having some of both when reasonably possible. Clinical experience and shadowing complement each other much better than treating either one as a replacement for every other form of healthcare exposure.
How Much Clinical Experience Do Premeds Need?
There is no universal AAMC number where an applicant suddenly becomes ready for medical school. I do not think you should approach clinical experience as though 199 hours is inadequate while 200 hours magically makes the application competitive.
Hours still provide useful context. Someone who spent twenty hours around patients has naturally had less exposure than someone who worked with patients every week for two years, so duration and consistency matter.
I personally accumulated more than 2,000 clinical hours before medical school, but I do not think you need 2,000 hours because I had 2,000 hours. My total became high because I started working clinically at 17 and continued medical assisting throughout college.
The better question is whether you have been involved long enough for the experience to become more than an introduction. Can you explain what you learned about patients, healthcare teams, communication, physician responsibilities, difficult days, and your own strengths and weaknesses? If you can barely answer those questions because you just started, continuing the experience is probably more useful than worrying about somebody else’s exact hour total.
My Own Clinical Experience Before Medical School
My first major clinical role was in urgent care, where I worked as a Medical Assistant and eventually accumulated more than 1,100 hours in that setting. It was a busy environment, and on some days we were seeing dozens of patients, which forced me to become comfortable moving between patient interactions, clinical tasks, documentation, and the needs of the physicians and other staff.
I later volunteered at a volunteer clinic while I was an undergraduate. That experience allowed me to use my clinical training while serving uninsured patients through responsibilities such as triage, vital signs, laboratory collection, testing, and Athena EMR documentation.
I also worked in emergent care, where my responsibilities included triage, phlebotomy, injections, laboratory testing, imaging-related work, and charting. Later, I worked in gastroenterology, which exposed me to a specialty environment and procedures that were very different from what I had previously seen in urgent care.
Moving between these settings was valuable because medicine stopped looking like one generic outpatient office. I could see how workflow, patient populations, procedures, physician responsibilities, and the healthcare team’s priorities changed depending on the setting.
Starting at 17 Changed My Premed Timeline
One advantage I had was beginning clinical exposure before college. My first opportunities helped me develop enough comfort around healthcare that I was not scrambling to find my first patient-facing activity during junior year when the MCAT and medical school application were already approaching.
I do not think every high school student needs to become a medical assistant. I do think that if you are genuinely considering medicine and can find an ethical, appropriately supervised opportunity, getting some exposure early can help you determine whether you actually enjoy healthcare before reorganizing your college years around becoming a physician.
I also learned a broader lesson from starting young: the first experience creates leverage for the next one. Once one clinic had trained me and physicians could speak to how I worked, I was no longer approaching every future employer as someone with no clinical background.
If you are still in high school, my Starting Your Premed Journey in High School guide explains why I think early exposure can be useful without turning high school into a four-year medical school application.
How to Get Your First Clinical Experience
The first opportunity is usually the hardest because employers understandably prefer someone who already knows how healthcare works, while you cannot obtain that experience until somebody hires or trains you. I remember this problem well, which is why I think students need to be more creative than simply searching “premed clinical experience” and submitting twenty identical applications online.
Start by looking at physician offices, urgent cares, hospitals, free clinics, hospice organizations, rehabilitation facilities, long-term care facilities, emergency medical services, and other healthcare employers around you. Search actual job titles such as medical assistant, medical scribe, patient care technician, CNA, EMT, phlebotomist, patient transporter, ED technician, and clinical support staff rather than assuming every relevant opportunity is labeled for premed students.
You can also use existing connections appropriately. Ask your physician, professors, prehealth office, family friends, older students, and other healthcare workers whether they know clinics or organizations that have previously trained students.
My complete How to Get Your First Clinical Experience guide walks through the strategies I used and how I would approach the search now. If you have no idea which job to pursue, I would pair that guide with the comparison below before applying randomly.
Which Clinical Job Is Best for Premeds?
There is no single best clinical job because the quality of the experience can depend as much on the employer as the job title. A great medical assistant position and a terrible medical assistant position can look completely different, just as two scribe jobs may provide very different levels of physician interaction.
I created my Premed Clinical Jobs Comparison: Scribe vs. MA vs. CNA vs. EMT and More to compare the major options based on patient interaction, physician exposure, training requirements, scheduling, pay context, and what each role tends to teach.
My own favorite is obviously medical assisting because that is the path I personally took. I liked having direct patient responsibilities while still working closely with physicians, and the outpatient schedule made it possible for me to continue working during school and summers.
That does not mean I think you should automatically become an MA. A CNA may get much more bedside care, an EMT may develop acute assessment experience, a scribe may follow physician reasoning in remarkable detail, and a phlebotomist may become extremely comfortable communicating with patients while performing a specific procedure repeatedly.
Choose the job that gives you meaningful exposure and fits your real life.
Medical Assisting Was the Right Clinical Job for Me
Medical assisting worked particularly well for my premed path because I wanted hands-on patient care and close interaction with physicians. Depending on the clinic, an MA may room patients, obtain histories and vital signs, perform testing, draw blood, give injections when trained and permitted, assist with procedures, document in the EMR, and help keep the physician’s clinic running.
The role also gave me something that short-term volunteering could not: continuity. I spent enough time with physicians and coworkers for them to see how I performed when the clinic was busy, whether I could take feedback, how I interacted with difficult patients, and whether they could rely on me.
Those relationships eventually mattered for references and recommendation letters. A physician who has watched you work for months can say much more about you than someone you followed silently for eight shadowing hours.
If medical assisting interests you, start with my How to Become a Certified Medical Assistant: CMA vs. CCMA. I also wrote How to Succeed as a Medical Assistant or Healthcare Worker using the strategies that helped me earn strong physician and coworker feedback across my own clinical jobs.
Do You Need Medical Assistant Certification?
Not every medical assistant position has identical certification requirements, which is why I would investigate actual employers in your area before spending significant money on a program. Some clinics strongly prefer or require certification, while other practices may train the right candidate on the job depending on the responsibilities and local rules.
I personally hold the Certified Clinical Medical Assistant, or CCMA, credential, and having established clinical training became useful as I moved into additional positions. It also helped when I volunteered at a volunteer clinic because the clinic already had evidence that I had been trained for the clinical responsibilities I was performing.
Certification still should not become an excuse to practice beyond your training or the responsibilities assigned by the employer. Premed students sometimes become so focused on getting “hands-on” experience that they forget patient safety matters much more than creating an impressive activity description.
My CMA vs. CCMA Medical Assistant Guide explains the different credentialing routes and how I would decide whether certification makes financial and practical sense.
What About Medical Scribing?
Medical scribing can be an excellent premed experience because scribes spend enormous amounts of time listening to patient histories, examinations, diagnostic reasoning, testing decisions, and treatment plans while documenting encounters for physicians. You can develop an unusually detailed view of how physicians think because you are following the encounter from beginning to end.
I want to be clear that I was not personally a medical scribe, so my direct clinical experience comes primarily from medical assisting rather than scribing. I still include it prominently because it is one of the most common clinical jobs premed students consider and can be particularly useful for someone who wants substantial physician exposure without completing a longer clinical certification program.
The tradeoff is that scribing may provide less direct hands-on patient care than MA, CNA, EMT, patient care technician, or phlebotomy roles. That does not make it inferior because it simply means the experience develops a somewhat different understanding of medicine.
My What Does a Medical Scribe Do? How to Become One as a Premed guide explains the job, training, clinical exposure, benefits, drawbacks, and how I would decide whether scribing fits your goals.
Should You Choose CNA, EMT, PCT, Phlebotomy, or Another Clinical Job?
CNA and patient care technician roles can give you some of the most sustained bedside involvement available to a premed because you may help patients with mobility, hygiene, feeding, vital signs, comfort, and other day-to-day needs. That kind of responsibility can teach you a great deal about dignity and patient care that is difficult to appreciate through observation alone.
EMT work can provide a different form of clinical responsibility because the environment is less predictable and often requires rapid assessment, communication, and teamwork. Phlebotomy gives you repeated procedural patient contact and can make you exceptionally comfortable speaking with people who may be nervous about needles or medical procedures.
Hospital support, ED technician, hospice, home health, rehabilitation, behavioral health, ophthalmic technician, and many other roles can also become strong experiences. I would not reject a position simply because it is less frequently discussed on premed Reddit.
The job title does not write your eventual medical school essay. What you actually experience while doing the work is what gives you something worth writing about.
Paid Clinical Experience Is Still Valuable
You do not have to volunteer for your clinical experience to matter. Most of my own patient-care hours were accumulated through paid medical assistant employment, and I think paid healthcare work can be one of the most efficient options for a premed who needs both income and clinical exposure.
Getting paid does not make your interaction with patients less real. You still have to arrive on time, perform the job correctly, work with coworkers, communicate professionally, and accept responsibility for the tasks you are assigned.
Employment may actually allow you to stay involved much longer than an unpaid position because you are earning money while building clinical experience. For students who need income during college, combining the two can make a demanding premed schedule much more realistic.
The limitation is your academic workload. A clinical job is useful only when you can maintain it without repeatedly sacrificing the grades and MCAT preparation that you also need for medical school.
Should Premeds Work Full Time During College?
I worked part-time and during summers because that structure fit my own college schedule, but another student may need or want to work substantially more. There is no universal weekly work limit that applies to everyone because the answer depends on the intensity of the job, commute, course load, finances, study habits, and other responsibilities.
I would protect your academic foundation instead of becoming obsessed with accumulating clinical hours as quickly as possible. If increasing from fifteen to thirty work hours consistently causes your science grades to fall, another 500 clinical hours may not compensate for the academic problem you created.
At the same time, some students have to work substantial hours to afford college and living expenses. In that situation, the answer may involve taking fewer credits, extending the timeline, choosing predictable shifts, or building a longer MCAT preparation period rather than pretending you have the same weekly schedule as a student who is not employed.
My Should Premeds Work Full Time in College or Focus on Grades? guide goes deeply into those tradeoffs and how I would protect both your finances and your application.
Volunteer Clinical Experience Can Add Something Different
Paid clinical employment made up most of my patient-care experience, but volunteering at a volunteer clinic added a different perspective. I was still performing clinical responsibilities within my CCMA training, but the clinic’s mission centered on providing care to uninsured patients.
That made healthcare access more visible to me than it had been in some of my paid positions. Testing, referrals, medications, follow-up, and other pieces of healthcare cannot be separated from whether the patient can realistically access them.
Free clinics can therefore combine clinical exposure with meaningful service when your role involves appropriate patient interaction. They can also be competitive volunteer environments because small clinics have limited capacity to train and supervise students.
My How to Get Into a Volunteer Medical Clinic as a Premed guide is based directly on my own experience and explains how to find clinics, contact them, use previous experience appropriately, apply without experience, and become useful after they give you the opportunity.
Your First Clinical Job Is More Than an Hour Generator
One of the most important things I learned is that your first clinical opportunity can become the foundation for several future opportunities if you actually perform well.
Once physicians, managers, nurses, coworkers, or other clinical staff trust you, they can become references. They may know another clinic that is hiring, introduce you to a physician in a specialty you want to shadow, provide a recommendation, or help you understand which next position would give you more useful exposure.
My own later clinical opportunities became easier because I was no longer applying as a student with no healthcare experience. I had skills to put on my résumé and people who could confirm that I knew how to work inside a clinic.
That is why I would rather see you take one good first opportunity seriously than constantly jump between positions because another job sounds slightly more impressive. Build something first and then use the experience to move forward.
My How to Turn Your First Clinical Experience Into More Premed Opportunities guide explains how I used clinical experience, physician relationships, references, résumé improvements, and introductions to create the next opportunity.
How to Succeed Once You Get a Clinical Job
Getting hired is only the beginning. The quality of the relationships and experiences you build depends heavily on what happens after the first day.
In my clinical jobs, I tried to learn how each practice operated, become dependable, pay attention when someone taught me something, accept corrections without becoming defensive, and gradually anticipate what needed to happen next. Those habits helped me earn strong feedback from coworkers and physicians and eventually made recommendation and reference conversations much more natural.
Do the basic things exceptionally well. Show up on time, learn where things are, follow instructions, communicate when you are uncertain, treat every patient respectfully, and help the team rather than acting as though certain tasks are beneath you.
I also think it is extremely important to admit when you do not know how to do something. Saying, “I haven’t done this before. Can you show me?” is much safer and more professional than attempting a clinical task because you are worried somebody will think you lack experience.
My How to Succeed as a Medical Assistant or Any Healthcare Worker guide goes much deeper into what I learned from interviews, working interviews, first days, long-term performance, and building physician trust.
Clinical Jobs Can Create Physician Mentors
One advantage of working closely with physicians is that a professional relationship can develop naturally over time. You do not need to walk into the clinic during your first week and announce that you are hoping the physician eventually becomes your mentor.
Become a good employee first. When physicians repeatedly see that you are curious, dependable, respectful with patients, and genuinely interested in understanding medicine, conversations about school, specialties, applications, and your future often develop on their own.
That is essentially how several useful physician relationships grew during my premed years. The physician knew me first through the work I was doing rather than through a cold request for mentorship.
Those relationships can eventually help with advice, shadowing, introductions, references, and recommendation letters, but I would treat those as outcomes of a good professional relationship rather than the reason you pretend to build one.
My How to Find a Mentor as a Premed guide explains how I think about physician mentors alongside research, academic, and other types of mentorship.
Clinical Experience Can Help You Answer “Why Medicine?”
One of the most valuable things clinical work gave me was evidence for why I wanted to become a physician rather than another type of healthcare professional. That distinction actually came up during medical school interviews, and I was glad my answer came from years of seeing different members of the healthcare team rather than from something I had invented during interview preparation.
As a medical assistant, I worked closely enough with physicians to see how their role differed from mine. I could observe the responsibility they carried for diagnosis, clinical decision-making, treatment planning, uncertainty, patient communication, and coordinating everything happening around the visit.
I also shadowed physicians and a physician assistant, which made the comparison more intentional. I was not trying to prove that one profession was better because I was trying to understand why the physician’s responsibilities aligned most closely with the role I personally wanted.
That is what clinical exposure should eventually help you do. You are not collecting evidence that healthcare is interesting because you are testing whether being a physician specifically still makes sense after seeing the work up close.
How to Get Your First Physician Shadowing Experience
Finding shadowing can feel awkward because you are essentially asking a physician to allow you into part of their workday without providing the same immediate value you would as an employee. The simplest strategy is usually asking people who already know you or your family first and then expanding outward if those opportunities are not available.
Your own physicians can be a starting point, as can physicians you work with clinically. Professors, prehealth advisors, older students, free clinics, hospital programs, and physician offices may also know doctors who regularly allow students to shadow.
If you need to cold contact a practice, keep the request concise. Introduce yourself as a premedical student, explain your interest, ask whether the physician allows students to observe, and be willing to complete whatever privacy, vaccination, or onboarding requirements the organization uses.
My How to Get Your First Shadowing Experience as a Premed guide walks through the process in detail and includes the practical questions I had when trying to build my own physician exposure.
How to Get More Out of Shadowing Than Simply Standing There
Shadowing can become passive very quickly if your entire strategy is standing behind the physician and waiting for the hours to accumulate. The purpose is understanding the physician’s work, so pay attention to much more than the diagnosis.
Watch how the physician enters the room and establishes trust. Notice how they ask questions, decide which details matter, communicate uncertainty, handle sensitive subjects, explain treatment options, work with staff, and move between patients throughout the day.
Save questions for appropriate moments rather than interrupting patient care. I found it much more useful to ask physicians afterward why they made a particular decision than to attempt to show them that I already knew the medical answer.
My How to Get the Most Out of Your Shadowing Experience guide focuses specifically on what to observe, when to ask questions, how to behave around patients, and how to turn passive observation into useful career exploration.
You Do Not Need to Shadow Every Specialty
Shadowing several different physicians can help you see how specialties differ, but you do not need to turn the process into an attempt to observe every department in the hospital.
I would prioritize enough variety to understand different ways physicians practice. Primary care and a specialty experience can already expose you to very different types of patient relationships, workflow, decision-making, and continuity.
If you have a specialty interest that appears prominently in your application, observing that specialty can also make sense because you should have some idea what the field actually looks like before repeatedly describing your interest in it. You do not need to know your future specialty before medical school, however, and many students will change their interests substantially once rotations begin.
Shadowing should make you better informed, not force you into choosing a specialty before you have even taken the MCAT.
Track Your Clinical and Shadowing Hours From the Beginning
This is an area where I can give you advice based on a mistake I personally made. I did not keep everything as organized as I should have during my early premed years, and reconstructing dates and hours later during application preparation took far more time than it needed to.
Track the organization, job or activity, start and end dates, approximate hours, supervisor or physician, contact information, responsibilities, and a few meaningful lessons while everything is still easy to remember. You do not need to write a full diary after every shift because a few lines when something important happens can be enough.
My Free Premed and MCAT Spreadsheet Collection includes a Clinical and Volunteering Hours Log that can help you keep clinical work, volunteering, and shadowing organized. It is much easier to maintain the information gradually than to sit down during AMCAS season and attempt to recreate several years of your life.
Tracking reflections helps too. You will eventually need more than the hour total because essays and interviews are much easier when you remember what the experience actually taught you.
Clinical Experience Should Not Destroy Your GPA
Clinical work can become addictive for premeds because it feels productive in a very visible way. Every shift gives you additional hours while a night spent studying organic chemistry does not create another résumé line.
You still need to protect your academics. Medical schools need evidence that you can succeed in demanding coursework, and adding hundreds of clinical hours does not erase repeated poor academic performance.
I learned the dangers of overloading myself much earlier when I took seven AP courses at once during high school, slept roughly four hours per night, relied heavily on energy drinks, and eventually realized that doing the maximum possible amount was not the same thing as making the smartest decision. I do not think premed students should recreate the same mistake with work, research, volunteering, and difficult college coursework.
Choose a schedule you can maintain for months or years rather than several heroic weeks. If necessary, accumulate clinical experience more gradually or use summers and a gap year rather than forcing everything into the same semester.
A Gap Year Can Be Excellent for Clinical Experience
If clinical experience is the major missing piece when your application timeline approaches, a gap year can be an excellent opportunity to work in healthcare full-time. Medical assisting, scribing, CNA or PCT work, EMT, phlebotomy, ED tech, clinical research with patient interaction, and other roles can become substantial experiences when they are your primary job rather than something squeezed between classes.
A gap year can also give you time to become truly competent in the role. The first few weeks of a clinical job are often dominated by learning the workflow, while the more reflective and meaningful experiences frequently happen after you become comfortable enough with the basic responsibilities to pay closer attention to the patients and team around you.
I personally applied straight through without a traditional post-graduation gap year because I had already accumulated substantial clinical exposure by the time I applied. That worked for my timeline because I started early, but I would absolutely recommend taking additional time when the alternative is applying with almost no genuine exposure to patients.
My Do I Need to Take a Gap Year Before Medical School? guide explains how I would evaluate clinical experience alongside the GPA, MCAT, research, service, finances, and overall application readiness.
How to Turn Clinical Experience Into a Strong AMCAS Entry
When application season arrives, do not use the entire activity description to list procedures. Medical schools should understand your responsibilities, but the description also needs to show what being around patients and healthcare taught you.
If I described my own medical assistant work using only “obtained vital signs, performed phlebotomy, gave injections, completed laboratory testing, assisted physicians, and documented in the EMR,” a reader would understand that I had clinical skills but learn very little about me.
The more interesting part is what happened after performing those responsibilities repeatedly. I learned how much patient communication matters, how differently people react when they are worried or uncomfortable, how a clinic depends on teamwork, and how physicians balance patient needs with constant time pressure and uncertainty.
Use my Complete AMCAS Experience Descriptions Guide when you are ready to translate your clinical work into the application. I have also built role-specific examples for medical scribes, CNAs, EMTs, phlebotomists, hospital volunteers, caregivers, technicians, clinical research assistants, and other common premed experiences so you can start with guidance that actually matches what you did.
How to Write Shadowing on AMCAS
Shadowing should be described differently because you were primarily observing rather than carrying patient-care responsibility. Do not invent tasks simply because you think the entry needs to sound more active.
You can identify the physicians or specialties you observed, summarize the range of settings when appropriate, and focus the reflection on what you learned about the physician’s responsibilities. If you shadowed several doctors, combining related experiences into one coherent entry can often make more sense than using several of your limited activity slots on similar observations.
My Physician Shadowing and Clinical Observation AMCAS Guide gives you specific 700-character examples and explains how shadowing differs from paid clinical work and clinical volunteering.
The best entry should make it obvious that the experience helped you understand medicine without pretending that observation gave you responsibilities you did not actually have.
Complete AspiringMD Clinical Experience Resource Library
If you have no clinical experience yet, start with How to Get Your First Clinical Experience and then compare your realistic options using my Premed Clinical Jobs Comparison. Those two guides will help you move from asking what counts as clinical experience to deciding which opportunities actually make sense for your schedule, finances, and goals.
If you are considering medical assisting, use my How to Become a Certified Medical Assistant guide and How to Succeed as a Medical Assistant or Healthcare Worker. These are the clinical guides most closely connected with my own experience because medical assisting accounted for the majority of my more than 2,000 clinical hours.
If you are considering medical scribing, read What Does a Medical Scribe Do and How Do You Become One?. I did not personally work as a scribe, so that guide compares the role with my medical-assistant experience while explaining why scribing can still provide excellent physician exposure.
If you are deciding whether you need more clinical experience or more shadowing, use Clinical Experience vs. Shadowing for Medical School. Then use How to Get Your First Shadowing Experience and How to Get the Most Out of Shadowing for the practical side.
If you want clinical volunteering, read How to Get Into a Volunteer Medical Clinic. That guide is based on my own CCMA experience at a volunteer clinic and explains how free clinics differ from paid clinical employment while still providing meaningful patient exposure when the role is appropriate.
If you already have your first clinical job, move to How to Turn Your First Clinical Experience Into More Premed Opportunities. Pair it with my Free Premed Resume Template and How to Get a Good Letter of Recommendation so the experience can eventually support your next job, shadowing opportunity, physician relationship, and application.
If you are trying to decide how much you can work during school, read Should Premeds Work Full Time in College or Focus on Grades?. Clinical employment can efficiently combine income and patient exposure, but the job stops helping when the schedule repeatedly undermines the academic preparation you also need.
If you are still in high school, use Starting Your Premed Journey in High School: Why Early Clinical Exposure Changes Everything. I started clinical work at 17 myself, so that guide explains both the advantages of early exposure and why you should not sacrifice your health or academics just to begin accumulating hours sooner.
Finally, if you are preparing your medical school application, use the Complete AMCAS Experience Descriptions Guide, Medical Scribe AMCAS and TMDSAS Description Guide, and Physician Shadowing AMCAS Guide. You can also use my Free Premed and MCAT Spreadsheet Collection to keep your clinical, volunteering, and shadowing hours organized before AMCAS forces you to reconstruct them.
Frequently Asked Questions About Clinical Experience for Medical School
What counts as clinical experience for medical school?
Clinical experience usually involves meaningful exposure to patients and healthcare through employment, volunteering, or another defined role. Medical assisting, CNA or PCT work, EMT, phlebotomy, medical scribing, ED tech positions, hospice, hospital volunteering with patient interaction, and other patient-facing healthcare roles can all provide useful clinical exposure depending on the responsibilities.
I would evaluate what you actually do rather than relying only on the title. The closer the role brings you to patients and the realities of their care, the easier it becomes to explain what the experience taught you about medicine.
How many clinical hours do you need for medical school?
There is no universal AAMC clinical-hour requirement that every applicant must reach. Hours are useful for understanding the depth and duration of an experience, but quality, continuity, responsibility, and reflection matter too.
I personally accumulated more than 2,000 hours because I began working clinically at 17 and continued throughout college. I do not recommend treating my number, or anybody else’s number, as an admissions cutoff.
Is 100 clinical hours enough for medical school?
It can represent meaningful exposure, but I would look at what those 100 hours actually involved and how they fit into the rest of your application. A consistent patient-facing role can teach much more than the same number accumulated through disconnected short experiences.
If you still feel as though you have barely begun understanding healthcare, continue the experience when you can. Your goal should be genuine exposure rather than stopping the moment a numerical target is reached.
Does medical assisting count as clinical experience?
Yes, medical assisting can provide excellent direct clinical experience when your responsibilities involve patients. My own MA positions involved responsibilities such as histories, vital signs, laboratory testing, phlebotomy, injections, clinical procedures, and EMR documentation depending on the setting.
It was the primary source of my more than 2,000 premed clinical hours. The combination of patient responsibility and close physician exposure is one reason I personally liked MA work so much.
Does medical scribing count as clinical experience?
Scribing is a medically related experience that can provide extensive exposure to patient encounters and physician reasoning, although the amount of direct patient-care responsibility is usually lower than in roles such as MA, CNA, EMT, or PCT. The exact experience depends on the employer and what the scribe actually does.
I was not personally a scribe, so I do not present scribing as part of my own clinical history. I still think it can be an excellent option when your priority is understanding physicians and clinical reasoning.
Does hospital volunteering count as clinical experience?
It can when you have meaningful interaction with patients or directly support patient care. A hospital volunteer transporting patients, answering call lights, supporting families, or assisting patients may have a very different experience from someone who spends the entire shift completing administrative work away from patients.
Both forms of service can still be valuable. Describe the activity accurately instead of trying to force a nonclinical volunteer role into the clinical category.
Does clinical research count as clinical experience?
Sometimes, depending on what you actually do. Recruiting participants, communicating directly with patients, obtaining histories, coordinating study visits, or performing patient-facing research procedures may contain a meaningful clinical component, while retrospective database analysis usually does not.
I conduct substantial clinical research in medical school, but I would not describe every oncology or genomic dataset project I work on as clinical experience simply because the research involves patients. Research and patient care can overlap, but they are not automatically the same thing.
Does shadowing count as clinical experience?
Shadowing provides clinical exposure but is primarily observational, which is why I prefer separating it conceptually from active patient-facing clinical experience. It can help you understand the physician role without giving you the same responsibilities as an employee or clinical volunteer.
I completed substantial shadowing alongside my medical assistant work and found that the two experiences complemented each other. My clinical job showed me healthcare from inside the team, while shadowing let me deliberately focus on physician decision-making.
How many shadowing hours do you need?
There is no universal AAMC shadowing-hour minimum. You need enough exposure to understand what physicians do and why their role fits the career you want.
I accumulated substantially more shadowing than I would tell every applicant to pursue because the opportunities were available to me and I was genuinely exploring healthcare careers. Once you understand the physician role across a reasonable range of settings, additional passive observation may provide less value than deepening another part of your application.
Is paid clinical experience as good as volunteering?
Paid clinical work can be extremely valuable, and most of my own clinical experience was paid employment. Working for money does not make patient interactions, responsibilities, teamwork, or lessons about healthcare less meaningful.
I would still develop service involvement somewhere in your premed path because service demonstrates something different. You do not need the exact same activity to satisfy every part of your application.
What is the best clinical job for premeds?
There is no universal winner, but medical assisting, CNA or PCT, EMT, scribing, phlebotomy, and ED tech work are all strong options when the actual responsibilities provide meaningful exposure. I personally favor medical assisting because it gave me direct patient interaction and close physician contact while fitting well around my undergraduate schedule.
The best job for you depends on training requirements, pay, scheduling, patient contact, physician exposure, and what opportunities actually exist where you live. My clinical jobs comparison guide breaks down those tradeoffs in detail.
What is the easiest clinical job to get without certification?
Medical scribing, patient transport, some hospital support roles, and certain medical assistant positions may be available without a lengthy certification depending on the employer. Requirements vary enough that I recommend searching real local job postings before paying for training.
The first clinical opportunity can be difficult regardless of title because you have little experience to show. A strong résumé, professional outreach, willingness to learn, and referrals from people who already know you can help considerably.
Should I get certified as a medical assistant?
Certification can make sense when local employers prefer it or when you want training before taking on clinical responsibilities. I hold a CCMA credential myself and found clinical training useful as I moved through several healthcare settings.
I would still investigate the actual employers around you before paying for a lengthy program because requirements vary. My CMA vs. CCMA guide explains how I would make that decision.
Can I start clinical experience in high school?
Yes, when you can find an appropriate and supervised opportunity. I started working in healthcare at 17, and beginning early gave me time to decide whether I genuinely liked patient care while gradually building skills and physician relationships.
You do not need to turn high school into medical school preparation, however. Protect your grades, sleep, health, friendships, and other interests rather than assuming earlier clinical hours automatically make you a stronger future applicant.
Should I take a gap year to get more clinical experience?
It can be an excellent reason to take a gap year when patient exposure is one of the major weaknesses in an otherwise developing application. A year of full-time clinical work can give you much greater depth than trying to squeeze a few hours into an already overloaded semester.
I personally went directly from college into medical school because I had accumulated substantial experience before applying. If I had reached application season with almost no patient exposure, I would have preferred waiting rather than rushing an application because I was emotionally attached to going straight through.
Can clinical experience be one of your most meaningful AMCAS activities?
Absolutely, particularly when the experience was sustained and significantly shaped your understanding of medicine. Clinical employment can give you material involving patient communication, responsibility, teamwork, difficult situations, mentorship, and why you want the physician role.
My own clinical work was a major part of my premed story because I had spent years around patients before applying. The amount of time made it possible to reflect on medicine from experience rather than simply describing what I imagined physicians did.
Get your first clinical experience
Learn how I got my first clinical experience, how to get one of your own, and how to be highly successful once you’re there
Shadowing
Learn how to get a shadowing position with a healthcare professional and how to get the most out of it
Building on your first experience
Now that you have your first clinical job or shadowing position, learn how to use this to get your next one, become certified, and get letters of recommendation