I'm currently an international undergraduate. Im trying to see if there are any clinical volunteering opportunities. However, I find a lot of hospitals or clinics requiring applicants as residents. Does anyone know some organizations that don't have restrictions on the resident status? Thank you.
Clinical experience for international students?
- Thread starter YVZ
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2013
- Messages
- 1,782
- Reaction score
- 1,384
This thread is meaningless unless you tell us what country you're in AND someone just so happens to know really well how to do things there.
Better option is to go to the hospital/clinic and ask if there are opportunities that do not require being a resident. Only way for people to know what you're looking for
Better option is to go to the hospital/clinic and ask if there are opportunities that do not require being a resident. Only way for people to know what you're looking for
Sorry if I didn't describe clearly. I am having my undergraduate in the UC right now, and I want to find if there are any volunteer opportunities open to international students in the Bay Area.
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2014
- Messages
- 738
- Reaction score
- 508
Go to the hospitals associated with UC medical school and ask if you can volunteer there as an undergrad pre-med student. I do not see why a non-resident cannot volunteer. Ask your pre-health advisor. They will help you immediately.
- Joined
- May 6, 2013
- Messages
- 22
- Reaction score
- 9
That is not true - I was also an international pre-med at a major US college (East coast, Ivy) and this was my experience:
1.) Although I was not the first international student at my school, my pre-medical advisers had nothing to tell me that would be different from their usual US-resident pre-meds. They do not really collect extra info for international students. Most will only tell you that it's close to impossible to do and that's where their international-specific advising ends (to be fair, I also got a contact for one of the previous international pre-meds, but that was it) - which is why I started my blog (see my signature).
2.) The resource (internal at my school) they referred me to - which is common to all pre-meds, not just internationals - was a list of various internships and clinical experiences, all of which sounded amazing. When I went over those, planning to apply to some of them for the upcoming summer, I found out most of them required US citizens or GC holders - and after I applied to bunch of them, at least half of those responded right away that I was ineligible due to my citizenship/visa status and most of the rest I never heard back from (and I do consider myself a competitive applicant). The same happened when I was applying for positions for my gap year.
If your school has a similar database, you can try to use it, but look carefully and potentially contact the employers about the requirements before applying. Try to ask people you know - other pre-meds (whose parents are often MDs) or MDs themselves, if they would know about anything (that's how I ended up getting my summer position). But be ready to spend a lot of time on it, it is not easy, indeed. Another option is also to look around the extracurricular clubs and hospitals affiliated with your school - both of which will usually take you as an affiliate with the university, not caring about your citizenship. (I was volunteering in nursing homes through a student club.)
If you are only looking for an interesting experience, another option would be trying research lab positions, where they are more used to internationals (which is what I ended up doing for the gap year), but with clinical positions, it is really hard. If you figure out an easy way to do it, please share, I would be happy to know, as many other pre-meds ask me the same question! Good luck!!
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2015
- Messages
- 828
- Reaction score
- 887
I was an international student at a Bay Area college too and unless things have changed very recently, most of the hospitals in Berkeley/Oakland/Hayward/Fremont let international students volunteer. Just google all the hospitals around and you'll find them. Two of these (at least as of 2 years ago) are the children's hospital in oakland and also Washington Hospital in Fremont. If you can't find any hospitals taking international students, then you're probably not searching hard enough.
EDIT: Also, I doubt that there'll be plenty of clinical internships around the area for international students, so if you're looking for something else to do during the summer, your best bet is to do research in a lab in your school.
EDIT: Also, I doubt that there'll be plenty of clinical internships around the area for international students, so if you're looking for something else to do during the summer, your best bet is to do research in a lab in your school.
