When should I get my first internship if I want to become a doctor?

Medicine in a little different that most careers, in that the "internships" most college students do working for a company to gain real life job experience and "audition" for an entry level job post graduation are not exactly applicable to what a pre-med student needs to do to understand if they truly want to enter medicine and to bolster their application. ( Physicians do an "internship" after graduation from medical school as part of their training but this is another story). In any case some of the things you need to accomplish can be done in an "internship" type setting like many of your non premed colleagues and other things can be accomplished in other ways. In any case it is helpful to
1) Gain experience in performing biomedical research by working in a science lab. You can contact any number of professors at your college and university and see if they or someone they know is doing research in an area relevant to biology or medicine. If this results in you getting to present some of the research at a scientific meeting that is a terrific boost.
2) Do volunteer work. Doctors need to care about people. This can be demonstrated by doing something that shows you care about people. This kind of community volunteer work can be done in a medical or non medical environment.
3) Shadow a physician ( that means spend some time observing a physician go about their clinical work, Doctor comes from a Latin word meaning teacher, and many physicians will be happy to let you tag along for a while and would be happy to discuss their work.
4) Work or volunteer in a health care related job ( this would be most similar to the classic "internship" and can involve work in ambulance crew, hospital etc, Many jobs that actually involve patient care however require some degree of training, before actually being near patients delivering care.
Good luck

Hi Biak,

I would strongly encourage you to pursue an internship while you are in college, either during the summer or during the school year. It's never too early to do an internship -- you can even do an internship during your first year.

There are several potential places you could intern, depending on what field of medicine you are hoping to get into. Some places you could intern include hospitals, Planned Parenthood, VA clinics, dentist offices, medical research labs, biomedical engineering centers, etc.

Talk to your career advising center about places nearby where you could intern during the year, or where you may be able to intern during a summer vacation.

Best of luck!