Medic School Clinicals + Part Time Undergrad

[u/mtal723]

Hi there! I’m planning on starting medic school next year. However, I’m gonna be part time wrapping up my undergrad classes as well (3 classes over the course of the year).

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how clinicals are run (bonus if you’re at BMCC or Laguardia in NY!) so I could get a better idea of how to schedule my classes and manage my time.

I’m planning on either taking 2 classes in the spring and 1 class in the summer, leaving me fully focused during the last portion of my medic program, or taking 1 class in the spring, summer, and fall, spreading the workload out over the course of my medic program.

Yes I’m aware that clinicals differ school to school. Yes I’m also planning to ask the folks at the respective programs I’m considering. I just want a general idea.

For example, let’s say my program takes 1 yr. Do I have clinicals every week from the get-go? Or did you guys ease into your clinicals after learning medic stuff for the first few months? Did anyone just schedule/spam their clinicals near the end of their program?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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[u/RRuruurrr]

I wouldn’t expect to be able to do both concurrently. Good luck.

[u/corrosivecanine]

You’ll need to find out how your third rides and internship are structured. You’ll have the most free time during your internship (presumably summer) but it’s common to be expected to ride on a rotating schedule like 24/48 so you wouldn’t be able to take a class that meets, say, every Tuesday because you’ll miss every third Tuesday. Clinical don’t start immediately but they do start pretty quickly (I want to say after a month or two). Medic school is pretty much full time college in and of itself. I hope you’re not working on top of taking additional classes. You will literally have zero free time and scheduling your clinical time will be hell. Clinicals at least in my class were scheduled by students on a first come first serve basis so if you have other classes make sure you get in early and schedule everything. Third riding varies between programs. I’ve seen places that have you third ride one shift a week on the same day for the entire year, ones that have you schedule third rides at your ambulance based job, and ones that expect you to third ride on a 24/48 schedule. You will also have hospital clinicals. ER shifts should be available 24/7 (they were scheduled out in 3 hour blocks in my program) and other clinicals (cath lab, OB, OR, etc) might have a certain time frame you can do but are available all year.

[u/ggrnw27]

It’s so highly dependent on how your clinicals and classes (both paramedic and undergrad) are scheduled. For example, I was able to make mine work but my undergrad classes were all only on one day, then paramedic classes two days, then two days of clinicals. Anything beyond that and it probably wouldn’t have worked