Are healthcare-related ECs required?

[MissingPrereqs 0]

Basically the title. I'm a nontrad from an engineering background, so I have a ton of interesting work experience, research, volunteering, and other ECs, but no volunteering at a hospital or anything healthcare related. Is this viewed negatively by adcoms? I'd like to avoid them thinking "this guy has no interest in healthcare/medicine".

Any experience or knowledge on the above would be greatly appreciated.

[petitmonstre111 72]

2 minutes ago, MissingPrereqs said:

Basically the title. I'm a nontrad from an engineering background, so I have a ton of interesting work experience, research, volunteering, and other ECs, but no volunteering at a hospital or anything healthcare related. Is this viewed negatively by adcoms? I'd like to avoid them thinking "this guy has no interest in healthcare/medicine".

Any experience or knowledge on the above would be greatly appreciated.

Short answer: no. 
 

However, for your benefit, it may be a good idea to get some exposure to healthcare to know what are getting yourself into.

[bgeh 1]

No, it is not required (with the exception of I believe Dalhousie Medical School). It also won't look bad on you that you don't have clinical experience. 

However, like petitmonstre111 said, you may want to try to do a little shadowing to see what medicine is about. 

[neurologist19 3]

56 minutes ago, bgeh said:

No, it is not required (with the exception of I believe Dalhousie Medical School). It also won't look bad on you that you don't have clinical experience. 

However, like petitmonstre111 said, you may want to try to do a little shadowing to see what medicine is about. 

In Canada, if you are from non healthcare field, shadowing is not legal and doing so can make you look irresponsible. I think taking some EMT course might be useful.

[bearded frog 470]

Having no health care experience what-so-ever would be a red flag in the US. Canada is a little more holistic, that being said the idea is that you should know what you're getting into, so any school that takes ECs into account may note that.

[AllyOOP94 5]

I have had friends who got in with zero health related experience and in fact one of them was an engineer. But it's probably best.