Not a clinical scientist but a biomedical student who has researched this a lot:
1. Lab placements are really hard to get at the moment and Unis know this but here's a few things i've done:
- Nuffield research placements
- volunteering at my hospital
- In2ScienceUK
- reading articles and books on my favourite topics
- Attending lectures given to the public by universities
- Summer schools (REALLY GOOD) i advise applying to sutton summer school AND look at different universities they run their own summer schools.
- Also some unis run their own competitions like essays or just mentorship events Imperial has a bunch
2+3. to become a clinical scientist you need to do a life science degree this is an umbrella term that comes a bunch of courses. The most common courses are: Biomedical science, Biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, genomics/genetics, anything with the word medicine afterwards (cancer medicine, nuclear medicine etc), immunology, hematology.
There's another factor to becoming an clinical scientist which i'll comment after this one, i don't want to make this too long and complicated.
4. It's up to you on the field you want to specialise in, more info on next comment.
6. I'm currently using an Ipad and Apple pencil, which i find helpful with annotating lectures, but honestly a laptop and dedication/time and you'll do fine
7. Whether it's hard depends on you, i must say you'll need to love science to go down this route, uni can be a struggle sometimes.
I hate my course which is why i'm transferring.