Canadians: How to get *meaningful* clinical volunteering / shadowing experience?

[sr555]

PREFACE: This question is directed to people familiar with the Canadian medical school admissions process. Please let me know if there is a better home for this thread, or if it's addressed elsewhere -- I could not find anything relevant.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: How does a prospective *Canadian* applicant get meaningful (i.e., non-clerical / custodial) volunteer / shadowing experience in a clinical medical setting, especially in the Greater Toronto Area?

CONTEXT: I am a non-traditional applicant. In addition to the usual qualifications, I have substantial public service experience in a couple of non-medical settings that I think will serve me well. Some people have told me this is adequate, but others have suggested that it is important that I acquire significant shadowing or volunteer experience in a clinical setting, for two reasons:

• In order to show that I have a firm grasp of what doctors do, and the conditions in which they work; and
• Medically relevant volunteer work is much more well regarded than exceptional public service in non-medical settings.

(Please feel free to tell me if the above are not true in the case of medical school applications *in Canada* as much of my intel comes from my American student, resident, and doctor friends.)

QUESTION: Assuming the above is true, how do I get meaningful volunteer and/or shadowing experience in clinical medical settings?

CAVEATS: I am aware that many hospitals have formal volunteering programs but these appear to involve clerical / custodial work ("candystriping") which while important and noble in their own right offer very limited exposure to doctors and the work that they do.

These programs are also, in my experience, highly bureaucratic and inflexible, and I have found the coordinators to be largely unhelpful, if not downright hostile towards prospective med school applicants (perhaps justifiably so based on prior negative experience with such people).

Moreover, the doctors I've reached out to individually seem to know little about shadowing and seem to think it's extremely unusual for non-FMGs (there's a formal program for such people). In fact, I've had a few docs tell me that it's basically impossible to shadow anyone, although this definitely doesn't square with what I've heard from a great many applicants.

By contrast, other people seem to have landed great, substantive, valuable positions where they've gotten good mentoring from docs. See, e.g., this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=786201

If anyone has managed to do so, can you share any tips, especially if your experience took place in the Greater Toronto Area?

Thanks so much.

sr555

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[getdown]

Shadow a doc for a hockey team eh?

 

[bkaDOC]

I know what you mean, GTA hospital can be impossible to get into for volunteering that doesn't involve pushing wheelchairs from one room to the other. And you can get a lot of static from volunteer coordinators just because they are bombarded by (sometimes rude) premed all the time.

A good alternative is getting involved in family medical clinics. That's what I did and it's been great. Look up the family medical clinics that are associated with the big hospitals, get the clinic managers contact information and contacted them directly, bypassing the volunteer department entirely.

I got a great response. Just let them know what you're looking for and they are usually really eager to help if they can. I contacted the clinic manager, let know what kinda of experience I was looking for now once a week I'm shadowing DR's for a couple hours as well as doing some clerical work.

I think volunteer offices just get so slammed with people it's hard but clinic managers can place people in clinic in whatever capacity works and just have the volunteer office do the paperwork after the fact.

Goodluck!

 

[deathvvv]

TBH its hard to get "meaningful" experience as you define it due to insurance and patient confidentiality issues. For most hospital volunteerings in GTA (ie UHN hospitals, St. Mikes, Sinai), you dont do much aside from helping with the clerks and possibly restock medical supplies when the nurse asks you to. As the above posters mentioned, try family clinics. There are several clinics that I know of who take volunteers. However, they have greater exposure to patients as they get to take vitals and help docs organize clinc charts. IMHO, that route is as close as one can get to shadowing in Toronto that I know of. Unless you get lucky or have connections, it would be really hard to find a doctor shadow. Also, there are some volunteer programs like SickKids' PRAISE program that allow you to get exposure to clinical research (read: annoy parents of little kids who are waiting 5 hours to see a doc with questions like how many times their kids pooped today). Let me know if you are interested in the program and I can send you more info.

Good luck

 

[sr555]

Thanks, all, for the prompt, frank, and helpful responses. It sounds like my plan of action will be to:

• Continue to work my existing connections and see if I can dig up any new ones; and
• Focus on smaller family clinics.

It sounds like competition for clinical opportunities in the GTA is ferocious. That was my impression -- apparently an accurate one. I would love to cast a broader net and am not inherently Toronto-centric, but unfortunately, for financial reasons, I have to stay local.

Thanks again!

sr555

 

[sr555]

Thanks! Can I ask a quick follow-on?

How important/impressive is clinical volunteer experience for adcomms in Canada? If I have really strong public service oriented ECs including organizational leadership, how much should I worry about getting such experience? I guess I'm wondering if I should just continue to focus on endeavours where I am already able to do great work, or if I have to get exposure to the hospital / clinic environment to show I'm serious about medicine?

I am sure this is addressed somewhere in the fora, but as you know a lot of the available intel is specific to the American context and I am getting the strong sense that the admissions processes in the respective countries are actually subtly but significantly different.

Thanks!

 

[sr555]

Ultimately I got all my shadowing/volunteering through connections with pre-med/medical student friends (in the UHN) who put in a good word for me.

Thanks. Can I ask what these experiences consisted of? Were the experiences themselves within the UHN?

PS - Do not go through the University of Toronto's volunteering liason program. Too competitive.

Thanks for the tip!