The internship hunting process

I cannot help but reflect that, had I known six months ago that my back-up plan for public health was going to be getting some more clinical experience by way of an internship, I would have been a little more careful to talk to some interns in the many interesting places I was visiting. Everything was public health-themed, however, and there are enough alternate paths in that field alone to keep a student busy figuring out all the options.

I also would have contacted some of my clinicians from school earlier and made sure that they could recognize me from the crowd. And that they covered a range of specialties (tip: selection committees are made up of clinicians...and they expect to see clinician letters of recommendation. Epidemiologists, even epidemiologists with a medical degree, do not quite count). 

There has been scrambling, added to the scrambling for school and mid-term essays, and the scrambling on the other end of the intern hunting process, which is going and looking at the clinics I'm applying to. I was disappointed in the internet's paucity of advice on this topic. Questions that occurred to me:

1. What do you wear if you are visiting a clinic for a day? Nice scrubs? A suit that can survive the odd encounter with a patient? I suspect most clinics don't intend to let unvetted (pardon the pun) intern applicants touch the animals, much less treat them. But...you never know. There are clinics that do, assuming that if you are put together enough to be visiting for internships, you must have reached a basic level of competence in fourth year.

EDIT: A suit. Everyone I saw was dressed as for an interview. I was dressed as for an interview and fit right in. Have a suit that you can stand to get pet-hair on because the chances are good you will end up restraining an enthusiastic golden retriever puppy for a student or a tech or a clinician.

2. How much time can you expect to spend? What is a good amount of time? On the one hand, I can see how tripping in, looking around, and tripping back out again isn't going to make a good impression. But how long do you stay if you've gotten a feel for the place and are on a tight schedule for the next visit? Do you plan on staying a whole shift? In some clinics that's a five hour day, if they're not busy. In others it is 14 hours and counting. And if it is the latter...at which point do you politely begin to edge to the door?

EDIT: Five hours seemed the average. You've started to get tapped out on the question front, the clinicians are still working and have asked you all the questions they're going to. If you have the whole day and are really excited about seeing some procedures go ahead and ask to borrow some scrubs, but otherwise say thank you and head out.

3. How exactly does one go about cornering the current interns to ask them if they are the happy sort of zombie-med-students or the unhappy sort?  One clinic I was at had happy zombies, but with that special desperation of doctors who have one day a month to sleep.

EDIT: Around hours 3-4 the clinicians lose interest in you and you can shadow the interns. I got a much better sense of the intern culture at one clinic by stopping in at their closet-sized "lounge" while they were taking a Christmas-cookie break. The intern space says a lot too--this one was clearly used and kept up from year to year.

I'm sure more questions will occur presently, but I'm starting to feel a bit zombieish myself.

EDIT: My unexpected favorite question to ask: What are you looking for in a candidate? I liked this question because it let me see what the clinic was looking for and whether that fit with what I can expect to offer as an intern. It sometimes sparked really long tangential conversations. It's only moderately awkward to ask, it helps to remember that you are interviewing them almost more than they are interviewing you.