It helps to think about what professional schools want to know about you based on your clinical experience. As they read your application, they will ask questions like:

• Does this applicant know what they’re getting into before committing to an expensive, time-intensive career path? Is their perspective sufficiently concrete and gained from personal experience?
• Has this applicant started to develop a good "bedside manner" and ability to care for people from diverse backgrounds who have medical needs?
• What is this applicant’s career vision? Where do they see themselves longterm?
• Is this applicant ready to navigate in hospital and clinical environments and work successfully as a team member within them?

No single experience is likely to cover all four of these aspects of clinical experience, so most students do some of each. Here are a few common ways that students gain clinical experience. 

• Shadowing: short-term, passive opportunity to get a glimpse into a certain specialty by following a doctor in their day to day work. You may have a chance to see how a physician interacts with their patients, discuss rewards and challenges of the profession, and gain insight on what you might want in your career.
• Hospital / Clinic / Hospice volunteering: longer-term, active opportunity in which you provide a service to the clinical setting. This can give you a sense of the culture within a unit of the hospital or other care facility over time, allow you to interact with the team within the unit (nurses, techs, physicians, etc.), and, in some units, you may have the opportunity to interact directly with patients and their families.
• Volunteering with patient populations: Opportunities outside of the hospital/clinic setting interacting with individuals with medical needs, such as working at a summer camp with kids with health issues; spending time with elderly individuals who are navigating dementia, Alzheimer's, and other conditions; assisting with health screenings for at-risk populations.
• Working / volunteering as an Emergency Medical Technician: after a course and certification test, Emergency Medical Technicians respond to emergency situations. Great opportunity to gain hands-on skills, but does not provide familiarity with the hospital setting or work of physicians. Some Princeton students train with Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad.
• Working as a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA): after a course and certification test, CNAs work alongside nurses to provide direct care to patients. Training is available through community colleges and through care facilities like nursing homes. Check your state's Department of Health for a list of training facilities.
• Scribing: paid position in which you follow doctors as they visit with patients and take notes for them, so that they can focus on the patient.
• Clinical research: students may be able to assist in enrolling patients or administering tests, which can help develop interpersonal skills and provide better understanding of the patient experience. Research also gives students access to mentors in the field and a sense of what it's like to work within an academic medical/research environment. 
• Volunteering through Hotline/Counseling opportunities: many students value the opportunity to develop active listening and counseling skills in these helping roles.

Don't limit yourself to one type of experience or one setting - the broader and more diverse the exposure to health and health care, the better. In addition to active experience, reading books about medicine, attending talks by medical professionals and med students, watching documentaries, keeping up with articles posted on our Facebook page about medicine, and taking health-related courses will further prepare students for medical school and their future careers.

Princeton students are resourceful and determined, and they explore various avenues to gain valuable clinical exposure, often maximizing clinical exposure during the long summer break and layering different experiences. Here are some common ways Princeton students gain familiarity with patient care, health professions, and the healthcare system.

1. Volunteer Work: Many students volunteer at local hospitals, hospices, clinics, or other healthcare organizations, around Princeton during the school year and near home during vacations. This could involve assisting with patient care, providing support to healthcare professionals, or working in administrative roles.
2. Internships and Research Opportunities: Some students secure internships or research positions at medical facilities where they can observe clinical practices and interact with healthcare professionals. They often add shadowing or clinical volunteering hours to their experience if they aren’t already integrated into the opportunity. Many students find these opportunities through our website and newsletter.
3. Shadowing Physicians: Students arrange shadowing opportunities with alums and other healthcare professionals to observe their day-to-day activities, patient interactions, and medical procedures. This firsthand exposure helps students gain insights into different settings and specialties, and hear about the rewards and challenges of the career.
4. Health-Related Student Organizations: Students interested in healthcare often join clubs or organizations on campus related to health and medicine. These groups may organize events, workshops, or speaker sessions that provide valuable insights into the medical field.
5. Participation in health-related classes and programs: These programs may include workshops, seminars, or hands-on experiences that enhance their understanding of healthcare practices. Many student groups host speakers: for example, we have a Doctor is In alum speaker next week.

A few medical schools will specify a minimum number of hours in patient-facing roles or shadowing. A few will require a letter of recommendation from a physician who can speak to your readiness for the profession. Most, if not all of them, are seeking to enroll students who show commitment to the investment required to become a physician. Medicine is an evidence-based profession, so it's unsurprising that admissions committees will seek evidence of your motivation that is grounded in experience, not in the abstract.

Every year, we have a few medical school applicants with very high GPAs and MCATs who have relatively weak/limited experience in and knowledge of health and healthcare settings. They often struggle to articulate their motivation for medicine in their application and interviews, and are unsuccessful in the admissions process. Most of them spend a year gaining additional experience and then gain admission in a future cycle, but they would have saved a lot of time and emotional stress gaining the clinical experience prior to their first application. 

Beyond medical school, there are some health professions programs that do have more specific, explicit requirements. Many Physician Assistant programs require a minimum number of hours spent directly caring for patients (often about 1,000 hours minimum with a recommendation for more). Many veterinary schools similarly seek minimum hours of animal care under the supervision of veterinarians. Explore the requirements for careers of interest in the Exploring the Health Professions section of our website.

For starters, we hope you’re planning on at least two glide years: one to accrue experience before applying and the other to keep building it after applying. Admissions committees value experiences you’ve already had more than anticipated experiences!

Our recent applicants have spoken highly about these opportunities:

• Fellowships that place you in a high-need community, like National Health Corps or MedServe.
• Serving as a patient navigator, where you have a caseload of patients and attend appointments and help them manage their care. This is part of the role in the UCSF Breast Care Center Internship, for example.
• Working as a Medical Scribe (through a hospital, clinic, or program like ScribeAmerica) or a Medical Assistant (a few practices hire recent college grads through word of mouth or places like our HPA job board).
• Gaining certification as a Certified Nurse Assistant. Being a CNA is a very hands-on, intimate patient care job.

Search our Glide Year Experiences spreadsheet (the middle link on this page) for job titles and locations that repeat.   

Starting from zero experience, it will also help to shadow, read healthcare news, watch documentaries, listen to podcasts and attend talks by health professionals, and otherwise find ways to immerse yourself in healthcare to complement the job. You will also want to do a lot of self-reflection, journaling, and otherwise thinking about how your narrative is taking shape so that by June when you submit your application, you have a personalized, evidence-based “why medicine” that convinces others that you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Our applicants tend to maintain some relevant experience during the academic year, and maximize vacation and glide year time. Admissions committees are looking at your collective experiences over many years to determine whether you have a realistic understanding of what you’re getting yourself into, and how you have developed the competencies that they seek in entering medical students. Think about both the activities you choose, and more importantly the lessons you can learn and articulate in your application materials about those activities. What will be most meaningful to you when it comes to learning about the profession, demonstrating your cultural competency, service orientation, and other competencies, and look for those experiences. No single experience is going to do everything for you—it’s about the big picture when you add all of the experiences together and tell the story in your application.

Pragmatically speaking, according to the latest survey of entering medical students, 94% have shadowed health professionals and 92% have volunteered in the healthcare field, and a survey of admissions officers shows that they place the highest importance on service in medical settings, service in non-medical settings, physician shadowing, and leadership, so those activities are worth targeting. Use small pockets of time during breaks to shadow (single days add up!), volunteer alongside classes and internships, and prioritize clinical opportunities post-grad if you haven’t accrued enough experience during your high school and college years to feel confident in your preparation.

It’s great that you had such an inspiring summer experience! Now that you’ve clarified your interest, turn your focus to thinking more about the kind of physician you want to be and refining the skills you’ll need to hit the ground running in medical school. We don’t mean that you need to narrow down your medical specialty (although it’s great to shadow physicians to learn about areas of interest). We mean that you should start to think about how and where you want to spend your time as a physician.

• Interested in urban medicine with diverse patient populations? Volunteer in areas that will help you better understand the needs of underserved and under-resourced individuals.
• Thinking about an academic medicine career? Look for research internships that will immerse you in that setting so that you see how it works.
• Hoping to pair work as a veterinarian with policy or administration work? Get involved in student groups or leadership opportunities where you help mobilize operations behind the scenes and can contibute to improving systems.
• Wondering how your passion for visual arts / engineering / whatever you love will make you a better dentist? Talk to some dentists who have similar passions and see if they’ve seen a connection.

As you think about these interests, talk with alumni health professionals and other mentors who have a similar background to yours or who are doing the kinds of things that you hope to do. The more that you hear from others about how and why they do what they do, and how they got there, the better you’ll be at telling your own story of where you’re coming from and where you want to go, which is the crux of the medical school application process. And no matter what, direct experience helping others who are navigating medical needs is critical, even if that’s virtual for the time being. Think about this in the context of other activities – once you know you like it, seek ways to get better at it – if you wanted to be a professional athlete, you wouldn’t rely on one summer of hard training to get you through. You would keep refining your training and preparation, from technical skill to mindset to learning from other professionals and coaches. The same is true of how to think about preparing for your medical career. If you need ideas on who to shadow or what kinds of experience to gain, we’re happy to help you brainstorm.

Your best bet is to return to an organization that already knows you: one week really isn't enough time to deeply engage in a clinical setting. Many healthcare settings require training and documentation, and  they may prioritize investing in longer-term volunteers. Spring break is a great time to gain shadowing experience, though! Spend a few days observing and having conversations with health professionals. You might also check with local organizations that have short-term volunteer opportunities--these are often shared through Idealist.org or local non-profits (like NYCares in NYC). Keep an eye on residential college newsletters for Princeton-sponsored service-oriented spring break trips, as well.

Generally, your clinical experiences in college will probably include volunteering because you likely don't have the training required for a paid position where you're interacting with patients, but we cannot quantify the amount: how much of your health-related experience is for pay, or through an internship, or shadowing, or true volunteer work is all up to the individual.

In addition to clinical experience, civic engagement in other settings -- tutoring, coaching kids, helping the elderly -- are also valued, so don't turn down those opportunities just because you don't think med schools will be interested in them. It's critical to get outside of the "Orange Bubble" and prepare yourself to care for the diverse patient population.

There is no magical formula here (and we know how much easier it would be if there was!)—the more time that you spend ensuring that you know what you’re getting yourself into before applying to medical school, the better. We recommend quality engagement over quantity, but there is also value to showing long-term commitment. One semester spent volunteering in a hospital is more likely to come across as “just checking a box” than as meaningful clinical engagement (especially if you start right before you’re about to apply). Think holistically about what medical schools are looking for from time spent with patients. This can include assessing whether you’ve developed empathy for people with medical needs from diverse backgrounds; your familiarity with health care settings and ability to work as part of the health care team; your service orientation; your “bedside manner” in communicating with patients and their families. Think about ways that you demonstrate some of these qualities drawing from other cocurricular activities, classes, reading, shadowing, etc., alongside your direct work with patients (but don’t use other activities as an excuse to neglect clinical experience altogether).

You probably want to focus on the things you do enjoy about being in the clinical setting and not the things that are tedious or uninteresting.  Medical schools do not “insist” on hospital volunteering per se, but they do value applicants with experience interacting with patients, and before one goes to medical school and obtains proper qualifications and skills, one is left with volunteering as the main means for gaining patient contact.  A few things to remember:

• If your frustration comes from a lack of contact with physicians, and the patients you see are asleep, you might be volunteering at a less than optimal time of day. When scheduling your volunteer work, think beyond what is best for your schedule. Volunteer in the mornings or afternoons, possibly on weekends if you have to, not late in the evening when the docs have gone home and the patients are sleeping.  And remember: we have a list of local physicians who have volunteered to have you shadow them--it's on our website.  You might try contact some of these physicians in order to have more interaction with doctors.
• Students often experience more than they realize when serving as a volunteer. Write down your experiences. Spend a little time recording conversations you've had with patients or conversations you've overheard between doctors and staff. The more detailed you are with your note-taking, the better equipped/informed you'll be when asked to discuss your volunteer work. (It may even help you better understand why you're volunteering in the first place.)
• Lastly, remember this isn't about your doing something you find interesting as much as it is about backing up your desire to work in a profession where serving others is at the heart of all you do. To be blunt, it's not about you, it's about what is needed to be done in order to help a hospital help its patients. Tasks like comforting patients, talking with them and their families, transporting them, etc. are essential experiences in your development as a caregiver.  

If you want a more active role, consider spending the summer gaining a certification as an EMT or Certified Nursing Assistant, which will give you hands-on skills that you can use to care for patients. We've had students who pursued certification and then worked part-time during the school year or full-time post-graduation in these positions.

When you apply to medical school, you will categorize each of your activities--two of the possible categories are Community Service: Medical/Clinical and Community Service: Not Medical/Clinical. We’ve seen applicants classify text/chat lines under both categories—there are no hard and fast rules. If someone asked you at an interview about how you classified an activity, you should be able to justify your choice (the same is true for how you categorize each class you’ve taken).

Regardless of the category they chose, applicants often tell us they’ve gained insights and developed competencies that have helped them consider their future work with patients. Do be careful not to overstate how much you can gain from texting versus talking with patients and spending time with them face-to-face, and be sure to expand beyond this activity in preparing to show evidence of your knowledge of and experience in health and healthcare settings.

Shadowing can an excellent way to gain exposure to and become informed about the everyday practice of medicine. Working closely with a healthcare provider and his/her staff in an office helps you to learn about expectations in the field and the challenges and rewards of practicing medicine. A shadowing experience also allows you to build a relationship with a mentor in the field and ask questions, ultimately helping you to decide if this path is the right one for you.

• Local: email HPA and request our list of local physicians in the Princeton area who are open to having students shadow them. 
• Away from Princeton: Reach out to a Princeton alumni via the Tigernet Alumni Directory and LinkedIn’s Princeton alumni community. In LinkedIn, you can enter keywords like “physician” (1900 results), “physician assistant” (650 results), “public health” (9500 results). Cast a wide net with a concise, professional yet friendly message and see if you receive responses. If you live in a more isolated area, you might also just search for your hometown and use Princeton as your initial means of connection, then see if they can connect you to health professionals in the area.
• The Center for Career Development offers "Princeternships" with pre-identified alums, and you can apply to participate in these shadowing opportunities through HandShake. The deadline to apply for January Princeternships is in November, and the deadline for Spring Break Princeternships is in February. 

When you contact a physician, tell the person where you found them, give a brief introduction of yourself, and what in particular interests you about their background, position, or organization. Let the doctor know that you'd be interested in any shadowing opportunities that they can provide. If your first contact is by email, attach a copy of your resume and let them know that you're happy to connect by phone if it's helpful. If your first contact is by phone, have your calendar available in case the physician wants to schedule something right away. Try to have an idea of what you're looking for when you shadow in case you are asked. You also might want to check out your peers’ Princeternship blogs to get a sense of what they have gained from shadowing experiences in the health professions.

If the doctor can't accommodate you for shadowing, you might see if they would just be willing to talk with you for an hour or so, and then put together a list of questions you might like to know more about in pursuing your interests in medicine (this is often called an "informational interview"). Career Development has a great list of starting questions for informational interviews.
 
For more ideas, read through our Shadowing Guide.

You sign a statement of integrity when you apply to medical school stating that you are portraying your experiences honestly, and this will suffice. You will be asked to provide contact information for each activity that you report in your application so that schools could follow up on the experiences if desired, but for the most part, they will trust that you are being truthful in your application.

We do recommend logging your hours and your personal reflections on each shadowing experience for yourself. That way, you'll be able to easily calculate your total hours when you apply and you'll have a record of how you've grown through each experience.

Excellent question! We want shadowing experiences to be positive for students and for the physicians who are providing this valuable opportunity. A group of medical school personnel, prehealth advisers, ethicists, and others have collaborated to developed Guidelines for Clinical Shadowing Experiences for Pre-medical Students. We encourage you to read through them so that you can provide a summary for the physicians, and you can also provide them with a copy of the guidelines, or a link to the document.

It depends on what you’ll be doing as you shadow and what you want to get out of it. Generally, if you’re just observing and asking a few questions, about 3-4 days full time will give you a good sense of what’s going on. Spread your time out across different shadowing opportunities with physicians or other health professionals in diverse specialties, types of practice (e.g., private practice vs. hospital, in-patient vs. outpatient) to maximize the learning experience. The more that you can shadow physicians with whom you have something in common, the more it may help you think about yourself in the role later. If you're a humanities concentrator, look for physicians with a similar academic background; if you're interested in MD/PhD, try to shadow physician-scientists or MDs who run their own labs. A couple of the goals behind shadowing are to see enough that you understand the rewards and challenges of day-to-day doctoring, and that you gain insight from folks who are doing the kinds of things you want to be doing.

Shadowing is a valuable way to gain exposure to how a doctor thinks and what their work looks like day to day. You spend time learning from watching a physician interact with patients. Generally, shadowing is a shorter-term experience; after a few days, you’ve gained a fair amount of insight on how that doctor does her work. To complement the insights gained from shadowing, we recommend seeking experience where you have an active role and personal responsibility for being a part of the health care team, even if your role is as simple as making sure that beds are made and patients have water. Additionally, shadowing is largely a passive experience and is mainly for your benefit. We encourage you to supplement your shadowing experience with something more hands-on that helps others. It may be that the physician you plan to shadow already has this in mind and will allow you to sit with patients or their families as they wait for the physician or assist administrative staff with tasks – pure shadowing is a good first step, but something where you are able to contribute to and not just benefit from the clinical experience is recommended. After all, part of the reason you want to be a doctor is to help others – demonstrate that interest by finding ways that you can help!

The Princeternship program through the Center for Career Development is a great place to start. The alumni physicians offering Princeternships are eager to have you, and many of them have hosted many “Princeterns” and will help to make the experience more comfortable. Here are a couple of stories from past Princeterns: Alice Vinogradsky learned more about private practice with Dr. Ganchi; Ava Torjani spent time with Richmond ENT; and Jasmine Hao and four other Princeterns had a virtual opportunity with Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.
 
Read through the Princeternship position listings to get a feel for the hosts’ work and what they hope to learn, then write a detailed, specific application about your “fit” for the positions you’re interested in.  Applications are due next week, so take some time to apply now! 

Here are a few ways to start the search online:

• Simple google search: Using a search term like physician Alabama “Princeton University” (without the full university name in quotation marks, you’ll get a lot of physicians affiliated with an Alabama hospital with Princeton in its name).
• Search on med school websites: Go to the Alabama medical schools and type Princeton or Princeton University into their search bars.
• LinkedIn: Start with Princeton’s LinkedIn page  and use keyword searches like Alabama physician.
• TigerNet: Log into the Princeton based alumni directory and search. It can take a while to find the right search terms, but using the state and the “healthcare” field/specialty sometimes yields better results than “occupation”.
• Start with the state/regional Alumni Association and reach out to officers who may be able to help connect you.

In addition to Princeton-affiliated health professionals, use your local network: your own pediatrician/physician, those who care for family members, high school guidance counselors/teachers, and other organizations you might’ve been involved in could help you find connections. For those of you from areas with fewer Princeton connections, we may also be able to connect you with alums—feel free to email us and ask! See the HPA “Making Connections” guides for more recommendations.

You can shadow anytime! Part of the reason to pursue clinical experiences like shadowing and volunteering is to get a better idea of what medicine is really like, which can help you decide whether or not it’s right for you.  

Check out our Shadowing Guide for step-by-step recommendations from how to find professionals to how to shadow successfully. Our online FAQ digs deeper into some questions about shadowing that students have asked us.

The Princeternship program through the Center for Career Development is a great place to start. The alumni physicians offering Princeternships are eager to have you, and many of them have hosted many “Princeterns” and will help to make the experience more comfortable. Princeternship applications open in October! To prepare for the application, update your resume since you’ll need it to apply.

If you plan to practice in the United States, it would benefit you to have familiarity with the way that healthcare is organized and delivered in the US. You can gain some of this through GHP classes, reading on your own, following the news, etc., but your own expectations for what it means to be a doctor or work with a healthcare team are often best informed by what you have seen/experienced in shadowing and volunteering.  If you have an interest in global health, try reaching out to physicians in the US who work in that sphere. If you worked with US-trained physicians abroad (e.g., attended a mission where US-based doctors go abroad to work with patients), see if there’s a way to shadow them when they’re back in the US—it could be particularly interesting to observe them in both settings.
 
It will also benefit you to gain familiarity with the diversity of patients that you’ll see in the US. Many students don’t have significant exposure to certain patient populations: elderly individuals, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, others who are underserved in the US system. Gain cultural competency in the US as well as abroad—volunteering, medical or not, can be a great way to do this—so that you’ll be better able to serve all patients.
 
Volunteering and shadowing abroad can add valuable perspective, of course. Do be careful that you’re not overstepping what you should be doing as an individual without medical training. It makes us nervous when students talk about doing more abroad than they can here—you do not want to perform any procedures or otherwise interact with patients in ways that are beyond your training. Before heading off to gain clinical experience abroad, take a look at the guidelines provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges for providing patient care outside of the US.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid providing any care that you would not be allowed to provide in the US based on your level of training. We would also caution you against programs where you may be asked to perform tasks that you aren’t qualified to perform, or which may negatively affect the local culture (see links on our website for details). Look for programs that follow the AAMC guidelines for students during clinical experiences abroad (and be sure that you follow them yourself). The University of Minnesota’s “Global Ambassadors for Patient Safety” online workshop will also help you think through the kind of global health experiences that are both meaningful and ethical.

Without training, limit yourself to observing care and attending to patients’ non-medical needs. If you want a more direct role, consider gaining certification as an EMT, certified nurse assistant, phlebotomist, or similar role.

It’s hard to quantify the benefits of these programs relative to the expense. There are many ways to shadow without paying a high price for it, such as reaching out to alumni physicians or participating in a program like the Summer Health Professions Enrichment Program (which provides a stipend) or the Premed Volunteer Program at St. Mary Medical Center. There are also funded IIP internships and GHP Health Grand Challenges internships that provide exposure to health care in international settings. There is no expectation that premed students participate in international health experiences—there are many ways to develop cultural competence in the US and abroad that don’t involve an expensive price tag.

We would also caution you against programs that seem more like “voluntourism,” where you may be asked to perform tasks that you aren’t qualified to perform, or which may negatively affect the local culture (see links on our website for details). We recommend looking for programs that follow the AAMC guidelines for students during clinical experiences abroad (and being sure that you follow them yourself). Atlantis is one of the programs that does adhere to these guidelines, and we’ve had students who had positive experiences with the program. The program outlines suggestions on how to fundraise; to our knowledge, Princeton students have not received university funding for the program.

There has been a recent proliferation of companies that coordinate this kind of abroad experience, and they have pros and cons (as outlined in this NPR podcast: The Risk (and Unexpected Benefits) of Sending Health Students Abroad). We at HPA feel most comfortable with programs that are partnering with campus programs like IIP and PICS – that way, we know that you have support from Princeton and that the programs have been vetted.

We maintain a list of summer programs in which Princeton prehealth students have participated on the Clinical Experience page of our website, but we do not endorse any particular programs; we recommend considering what these programs offer critically, and using the AAMC and ADEA guidelines for providing patient care internationally as you evaluate organizations. Also keep in mind that there are many vulnerable and underserved populations in the US who would benefit greatly from your assistance as a volunteer for the summer – do not feel that you can only make a difference by traveling abroad. As for funding, the Student Activities Funding Engine (SAFE) is the best place to start.

Q: I have some specific questions about a global health internship that I found in Vitals. How do I know if it’s legitimate or recommended by HPA? Who do I contact about the opportunity to learn more?
 
A: We advertise internships that sponsoring programs ask us to share with our students, but we do not necessarily endorse/recommend them. There are some abroad programs that can do more harm than good (see “Additional perspectives about international opportunities” on our website), so we try to screen those out of our listings, but it can be hard to judge from their websites. And if students reach out and tell us that they had a negative experience with an internship sponsor, we will often remove that internship from Vitals.
 
In terms of abroad opportunities, we have the most faith in the programs that are affiliated with the Office of International Programs, Global Health Programs/Center for Health and Wellbeing, and other Princeton offices that do more closely screen their sites, and provide support while you’re abroad. We list the sponsoring office/program with all of our Vitals links, and you should reach out to them directly with questions.

Just like premeds, focusing on your passions and pursuing them in depth and over time is key. Shadowing dentists in different settings so that you can gain perspective on the career opportunities is valuable. A couple of areas that are emphasized more for predental students than premeds are business skills and manual dexterity. Many dentists go into private or group practice, and if that’s a route that you’re considering, some early preparation in business/management can be valuable. Manual dexterity, developed though activities like ceramics, hand crafts, video games, etc., is also beneficial. It’s also important to be able to connect with others—both patients and colleagues—in close proximity. Dentists are working side by side with their assistants and techs, often in close spaces, and have to be attuned to patients’ feelings via verbal and especially non-verbal cues in ways that physicians in many specialties do not. Activities that develop this team mentality and ability to put others at ease will prepare you well for the career. For more perspectives on predental preparation, read through the information on the ADEA GoDental website.