By: Savvy Pre-Med Staff
As the opening of the 2021-2022 medical school cycle looms near, many pre-med applicants have a pressing question on their minds: in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, how will medical schools evaluate virtual clinical experiences?
Well, we’re here to help answer that question. We have gathered data and responses from 162 MD and DO schools to assess how they will treat virtual clinical experiences and what competencies they’ll be looking for in these experiences.
Let’s breakdown the data and analyze the qualitative responses so that you know what to expect during this upcoming cycle!
For each school, we gathered responses for two basic questions:
Schools answered with one or more of the following responses:
These all seem pretty straightforward, although “context of the entire application” feels a bit vague and convenient for the medical schools.
Schools answered with one or more of the following responses:
Unlike question #1, some of these answers are a little cryptic or overlap with answers from the previous question, so we’ll be parsing through this information to pull out what seems to be most relevant to applicants.
Keep in mind that medical schools often submitted more than one answer.
“Virtual experiences are of lesser value”
Chosen by 11 out of 162 medical schools (6.8%)
“Virtual experiences are equal to in-person during COVID”
Chosen by 71 out of 162 medical schools (43.9%)
“Virtual experiences are always equal to in-person”
Chosen by 18 out of 162 medical schools (11.1%)
“View virtual experiences in the context of the entire application”
Chosen by 78 out of 162 medical schools (48.1%)
“Did not comment on virtual experiences”
Chosen by 22 out of 162 medical schools (13.5%)
Keep in mind that medical schools often submitted more than one answer.
“Prefers in-person”
Chosen by 23 out of 162 medical schools (14.1%)
“Direct patient interaction”
Chosen by 47 out of 162 medical schools (29%)
“Observe doctor-patient interaction”
Chosen by 55 out of 162 medical schools (34%)
“Virtual experiences accepted”
Chosen by 106 out of 162 medical schools (65.4%)
“No information provided”
Chosen by 23 out of 162 medical schools (14.1%)
“Consider experience within the context of the overall application”
Chosen by 63 out of 162 medical schools (38.9%)
“Virtual equal to in-person”
Chosen by 18 out of 162 medical schools (11.1%)
“Teamwork”
Chosen by 9 out of 162 medical schools (5.5%)
“Virtual experiences similar to in-person healthcare interactions”
Chosen by 25 out of 162 medical schools (15.4%)
“Memorable experiences”
Chosen by 56 out of 162 medical schools (34.6%)
“Telehealth”
Chosen by 17 out of 162 medical schools (10.4%)
“Healthcare experience NOT required”
Chosen by 1 out of 162 medical schools (0.6%)
“Engagement/Asking Questions”
Chosen by 5 out of 162 medical schools (3.1%)
“Service to the community”
Chosen by 6 out of 162 medical schools (3.7%)
Besides these polling questions, many schools also provided written qualitative responses. As expected, these written responses had varying degrees of specificity, usefulness, and clarity.
Here’s one that struck us as particularly clear, fair, and insightful:
“We understand that COVID has made it more difficult to find in-person experiences, so the way we weigh those scores may change as we go forward. We do however weigh in-person experiences the same as virtual because we care more about what you learned from the experience, and if you can communicate that effectively, you should be fine. For a shadowing experience, we like to see a decent variety of interactions, but you probably won’t do much hands-on interactivity if you aren’t a current medical professional. For volunteering experiences, we want to understand why a particular experience was important to you, whether it be in healthcare or something else. The level of contact will vary from experience to experience, but for us, what matters most is that you learned something about a particular specialty, work environment, or yourself.”
Here’s one that struck us as vague boilerplate language that was chosen to be a safe, noncommittal response:
“Every applicant will have a different set of experiences. We look at these experiences in a holistic way. All admissions committees understand the constraints applicants are currently under. Therefore there is not a yes/no answer to your first question, and the answer to your second questions is ‘it depends.’ Sorry we cannot be more helpful.”
Here’s one that struck us as rather unhelpful:
“As we have not seen much virtual experience yet from current applicants, I cannot say what weight will be given to a virtual experience. As with any experience, the goal is to learn how it has impacted your understanding of the role of doctors and medicine in treating patients.”
#1. The majority of medical schools will accept virtual experiences (but secretly prefer in-person ones)
COVID-19 has had unprecedented impacts on all sectors of society, and medical school admissions is no different. Overall, it will be difficult for medical schools to claim equity in their selection processes without adapting to the pandemic and more liberally accommodating students’ efforts to meet requirements.
However, if all things are equal between candidates, we have a hard time believing that medical schools wouldn’t value in-person experiences over virtual ones.
#2. Medical schools will prefer the virtual experiences that most clearly simulate in-person ones
Let’s consider why schools require shadowing and clinical hours in the first place:
With these criteria in mind, the question becomes - can these skills and exposure be replicated on a virtual platform?
Maybe. We think it depends on what’s actually happening during these virtual experiences.
Medical school admissions is a “zero-sum game” (one person’s acceptance is another’s rejection). Or in other words, medical school admissions is scaled - if everyone is deprived of certain opportunities, like shadowing and clinical opportunities, your reactive choices as an applicant will be considered and compared to others in your same position.
So, if you can’t access shadowing or clinical hours in-person, then medical schools will value the next best thing.
#3. Medical schools will compare the quality of your virtual experiences to other candidates
There will be a HUGE emphasis on what actually happens on these virtual shadowing and clinical platforms.
It MATTERS WHAT YOU DO, not just the accumulation of hours. This applies to in-person clinical experiences as well, of course - are you just answering phones, or are you playing some kind of active, patient-focused role?
The litmus test for whether the virtual shadowing is meaningful: can you write a compelling essay about the experience?
And what makes a compelling essay? Usually, that relies on you having an active role and learning in a hands-on way, whether that’s technical or interpersonal skills.
Thankfully, some virtual platforms allow you to be MORE active than traditional shadowing, if they’re conducted well.
During traditional shadowing, you usually can’t interact with patients, the doctors don’t have time to teach you very much, and you can’t push pause to educate yourself about a case and its underlying factors.
Virtual shadowing could potentially offer all these missing criteria, but it will be important for you to seek the right platforms that will maximize your virtual experience).
Just like telemedicine overall, we believe that virtual shadowing is here to stay, even after the COVID pandemic is over. This has parallels to online education in general - as a society, we’re slowly going to do more training, activities, and learning virtually.
And medical schools will be forced to adapt, just like everyone else.
Have any questions about virtual clinical experiences for medical school? Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll respond to you personally!
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