How To Become A Graduate Student Clinician: What It Is and Career Path

What is a graduate student clinician and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Dr. Elisabeth D'Angelo Ph.D., CCC-SLP, CBIS

Graduate student clinicians are completing their medical degrees while working in healthcare facilities and gaining practical experience in their area of specialization. Technically not a job, as you do not get paid for this position, on the contrary: you pay a heavy price to get to be in med school in the first place.

You will be completing shifts under the supervision of licensed physicians. Your duties will depend on what area of medicine you specialize in, but they will involve diagnosing and treating diseases in a clinical setting.

Being enrolled in med-school is necessary for you to take on this role. There is no way around this, really, no gray areas, no ifs, and, buts, or alternative solutions. Once you graduate from med-school, you will be in the position to apply for a full-time physician position in your area of expertise, which will be an exhausting but rewarding job both on a personal and financial level.

What general advice would you give to a graduate student clinician?

Dr. Elisabeth D'Angelo Ph.D., CCC-SLP, CBIS

Associate Professor, California State University - Sacramento

Be open to trying all aspects of the field: medical, school, early intervention/home based care…. If you are not sure where you want to end up or focus on and cannot decide between medical or school, adults or children, make sure you get as many experiences as you can. Ask your Clinical Fellowship Year supervisor a lot of questions: you are still learning. You are not expected to know it all when you are done with your Master’s Degree. In fact, the most successful speech-language pathologists know that they will always continue to learn!

ScoreGraduate Student ClinicianUS Average

Salary

4.7

Avg. Salary $59,667

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.5

Growth rate 21%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.9

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.35%

Asian 4.45%

Black or African American 4.77%

Hispanic or Latino 9.37%

Unknown 3.78%

White 77.29%

Gender

female 90.32%

male 9.68%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

5.5

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.7

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

8.1

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a graduate student clinician

Explore graduate student clinician education requirements

Most common graduate student clinician degrees

Bachelor's

80.2 %

Master's

18.4 %

Associate

0.7 %

Start to develop specific graduate student clinician skills

Skills	Percentages
Motor Speech Disorders	15.50%
Patients	11.37%
Autism	9.67%
Dysphagia	6.72%
Traumatic Brain Injury	4.62%

Complete relevant graduate student clinician training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New graduate student clinicians learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a graduate student clinician based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real graduate student clinician resumes.

Research graduate student clinician duties and responsibilities

Provide evaluation and treatment of communication disorders including autism, language disorders, and phonology disorders for preschool-age children through adult.
Participate in development and execution of treatment activities targeting expressive/receptive language, articulation, fluency, and AAC.
Complete bedside swallow evaluations, dysphagia management, and speech-language assessment and treatment for individuals within the inpatient acute care department.
Learned to use ArcMap (GIS software) on site and utilize as primary tool for analysis.

Prepare your graduate student clinician resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your graduate student clinician resume.

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