I want to first thank you guys fro being honest with me, but forgive me if I find it difficult to swallow regarding ECs. I will not deny that my ecs could improve, heck doing more is better, but my premed advisor told me its the quality of the ecs not the quantity. The things I did were not purely just out of wanting to go to medical school. The one main thing that I mentioned to you guys was the shadowing of a doctor overseas. Now I know shadowing at U.S is probably more desirable, but perhaps if I explain to you in depth the things I saw. I shadowed a surgeon at the hospital at the orthopedic department and some of the things would be grueling to most, but enlightening to aspiring doctors such as myself and you guys. I saw kids with mangled arms crying to a point I never though possible. I was able to communicate with patients who were disraught about the situations of their loved ones. I even got to see a surgery where the surgeon had to break the truth to the patient regarding amputation, which I was of course not allowed to witness the procedure due to patient privacy, but what I saw the emotions really hit me. I guess what Im getting it is, which is my problem, I find it hard to swallow that these things that I have done don't make me competitive. I know there are people who may have done more, but that doesn't mean better.
I also wanted to avoid mentioning this because I felt it would be low to mention this, but during the week of my mcat an uncle of mine passed away which kind of threw me off, I don't know he wasn't close to the point I cried but I felt so weird about it, I don't know.
First of all, I'm sorry to hear that your uncle passed away. Regardless close or not, I'm sure it doesn't help making a family smaller. That being said, the tougher question is that if you decide to share that information, it may be conceived as a crutch, and frankly, one may ask why you chose to take the test if you weren't "completely there," since you could've voided it. I'm not sure if this would happen, but I cannot help the thought of it happening.
Well, now we're getting to something. Usually most people care about the numbers. If you feel that these volunteer experiences were meaningful to you, then well, there's nothing that we can say to take that meaningfulness away from you! And that's a good thing. You share your experiences on your application as well as in your interviews. Tell them how you've grown up, what it taught you about the responsibilities of being a physician.
But here's the remaining problem. Part of being a physician is that you're training in the United States. You're training in a country whose medical system is not only broken, but also one of a kind because the patients exercise INCREDULOUS amounts of autonomy compared to other nations, and while the payment system is far from any form of single-payer/socialistic medicine. Regardless if these things are bad or good, they expect you to have an understanding based on your experiences in American Healthcare. Look, it's great that you have the heart, and you've seen a lot of stuff, etc etc, but do realize that your training as a physician is not just only the pathology, the ethics, etc etc, but also the bureaucracy and culture that exists in American medicine. A very simple comparison: We're probably one of the few healthcare systems that trains its physicians post-college education...The rest of the world takes MD entrance exams in high school!
Again, the point is not to say that your experiences are meaningless, and I do apologize if it came off that way. But do realize that adcoms do want to see that you have A) commitment and B) exposure and adequate understanding of the American medical system.
When I first started volunteering, the first thing I saw in the ER was a gunshot wound (GSW) to the head. Shocker. The next shift I was there, I saw a teen who decided take his life and his parents were next to the bed clenching his pale hand screaming him to come back, while we had to proceed with CPR compressions that were essentially destroying his chest cavity. Shock & Awe? Yes. But to be honest, what I ended up sharing in my interviews was how healthcare was delivered. Yes, you do learn about the stress and the amount of responsibility a physician will have, but what I found to be more meaningful to my interviewers (from my experience) was telling them how teamwork is such an integral part of delivering good healthcare. Yes, when you have people dying and you see the brutality associated with illness and disease, it often can overshadow what you observed on the delivery of healthcare. You know, the next morning you tell your buds, "Yo, guess what I saw yesterday"....etc etc. And then you proceed to tell someone about how gruesome someone's injury was, and then the person goes WHOA and so forth.
Now, observing those parts of medicine is good. no doubt. It helps you understand what you will see. But, part of the volunteering/shadowing is again, seeing how the system in america works. For example, patients here may have very different maladies from where you worked/volunteered/shadowed, and physicians often have to face poor socioeconomic determinants of health that are soooooo often the problem of the various chronic illnesses that plague our society. In developing countries, this is usually not the case. In America, you will find that many patients that you encounter will have substance abuse issues, for another example.
My point is that often times patient populations, the ailments they present with, the socioeconomic backgrounds they come from, are often very different. Even when I was studying abroad in Chile, patients presented with similar conditions but it was still such a different experience compared to what I've seen in the US simply because their healthcare system was soooo different!
At the end of the day, it's good that you have gotten the experience abroad. That being said, talk about what you have learned, rather than what type of gory/shock-value story you want to share. Maybe it might be a good hook or catch to a personal statement, but realistically it should be a good reflection of what you have learned about the healthcare field that you will soon enter. It might be useful to have a compare/contrast since you have volunteered for a little bit at stanford, yes.
As far as the hours go, the concern about 100 hours is that even though you may have gotten SO much out of 100 hours, I usually felt that 100 hours was enough to get my feet wet and to have the nursing staff respect me. Why? that's 25 weeks, or about 6 months. That's like the minimum amount I need to volunteer at my hospital before they would even let me move over units. I used to have volunteers that come by for six months and I'd still never know their names or what their work ethic is, when I worked at the hospital and actually had to supervise them on my unit. If you really have make some inways after 6 months, good for you. And honestly, if you really have, I'd continue volunteering as much as you can, seeing how much you've really made an impact.
