If you’ve worked as a scribe or will be filling out the AMCAS primary application, you will most likely be writing some sort of description for your experience. It can be tricky, though trying to figure out if you want to write a story or tell it how it is, or just provide a simple job description. The truth is, all of these work, but sometimes it’s good to provide a mix of them throughout your 15 descriptions. Today, I’m going to walk you through how each method shines and give some examples you can follow!
Working as a medical scribe is one of the best clinical experiences you can have as a premed student aspiring to go to medical school. If you’ve been one, you’ve most likely learned a lot, observed many patient interactions and physicians, and potentially gained some hands-on patient care.
Want to become a medical scribe? Check out how to become one!
As a result, it’s likely you’ll be putting this as one of your 15 amcas experiences which means you’ll need to write a paragraph about the activity. You may be wondering “How do I write an amcas experience description?” or “How do I write a medical scribe amcas description?”. Well, I’ve got your answer today and some examples. Let’s walk through it!
What are the amcas experience description categories?
To start, I’ll explain the amcas experience descriptions. You have 15 total slots for your descriptions and they come in many different categories, so you have to pick what fits your activity best. However, it encompasses everything, even hobbies! Here are the options:
Community Service/Volunteer – Medical/Clinical
Community Service/Volunteer – Not Medical/Clinical
Conferences Attended
Hobbies
Honors/Awards/Recognitions
Intercollegiate Athletics
Leadership – Not Listed Elsewhere
Military Service
Other
Paid Employment – Medical/Clinical
Paid Employment – Not Medical/Clinical
Physician Shadowing/Clinical Observation
Publications
Social Justice/Advocacy
Teaching/Tutoring/Teaching Assistant
In total, there’s 19 of them. You can only choose one though! What I found was that a lot of my activities could be multiple of these, so I just had to pick the one I felt it best represented.
What do you fill out on the amcas experience description?
Within each individual activity, you will have to type out the:
Experience name
Contact name, their title, email address, and phone number
Organization name
City/state/country
Most meaningful experience (Yes or no question, you can have a max of 3 of these)
Completed hours (plus start and end date)
Anticipated hours (plus start and end time)
What is the meaningful experience designation on amcas?
Now, these are all kind of self explanatory, but I wanted to explain the meaningful experience designation. These are experiences that you deem to be the “most meaningful” in your journey and as a result, they give you more character count/words to explain it. You normally get 700 characters to give your description and with this designation, you get an additional 1,350 characters. That’s a huge increase! With this, you can tell stories or really explain why it was important and what you did.
The medical scribe experience description:
Ok now we are ready for the description. I want to talk about the two main strategies you can use here.
- Be factual and say exactly what you did & learned
OR
- Tell a story that SHOWS what you did & learned
For me, I really tried to give a good balance between #1 and #2 throughout my 15 activities. However, I only used one strategy per activity unless it was a most meaningful description. You really don’t have room for both strategies in one description.
For strategy #1, you should explain that you charted for a physician, helped flip rooms if you did that, include if you took care of patients, and maybe a bit of reflection on how it impacted you.
An example would be something like this: 700 character
“Documented procedures, office visits, and surgeries for the hospital’s cardiologists using Athena EMR. Working with the physicians, I learned the flow of patient care and how it is documented for the patient’s and physician’s safety. When not charting, I interacted with patients giving them water, assisting them to the restroom, and spoke with them until the physician arrived. “
Something like that. It ideally would include what you did skillswise, indicate that you worked closely with physicians and their specialty if that is one you are interested in, and that you had some time with patients. I did not ever work as a scribe, so I think you can put together a better description in regard to the skills learned and time spent with physicians and patients.
For strategy #2, I recommend you think of a patient interaction or some sort of procedure you were charting in. It should be a story that shows that you were charting, interacting with physicians, and better yet, with patients.
Here’s an example:
As the surgery finished, Dr. H remarked “10 stitches, all instruments accounted for”. As I typed it into our EMR, the ECG flatlined. “Anne”, our patient, was in trouble and Dr. H needed all hands on deck to help her, including me. Gloved up, I handed sterile instruments to Dr. H and called other staff into the room. Anne recovered and I recounted the incident in the chart with a relieved smile knowing she was okay and we were able to tackle the issue as a team. Following the incident, I spoke to Anne and let her know how happy I was that she was okay and how frightened we were at the time, hoping to further console her before I had to move to the next room. Anne was one of many patients I was able to help care for, and my joy in her recovery has become a lasting memory when I think of medicine.
This story is much less about exactly what you did, and is more about telling what you did. It’s really helpful in my opinion, to include these because it makes it easier for an admissions committee member to read. After all, we’re all human and its easier to read stories than the same description over again.
Now, the story basically shows that you were working with a physician, charting things in an EMR, assisting with handing supplies around, consoling and working with patients, and being a great team player. It showed you being empathetic and caring towards our patient named Anne and hints to the reader that you care a TON about each patient and you look fondly upon memories of them recovering.
In my opinion, a story can accomplish and project many more values and reflections than a standard job description can.
One thing I want to note is I think it’s good to show/reflect on what you enjoyed the most or learned from the experience. In example #2, I explained that I found I loved the memories of patients recovering. It was a way to show how much I liked patient care while also indicating that I cared about their recovery.
Obviously, the odds of a scribe getting involved in patient care and surgery assistance is small, but it can happen in private practice and did a few times when I was in a surgeon’s private practice. You get the point on the stories, though!
Were you also a medical assistant? You will want to check out my write up on the AMCAS medical assistant experience descriptions w/ examples