How do dental schools view this?

Does it look bad to dental schools if you are doing research at a MEDICAL school and volunteering at a hospital? does that make your committment to dentistry seem less strong? Of course I have and will also be doing dental shadowing and volunteering, but for the meantime I want to do research and non-dentistry volunteering.

The research can only help your application, it actually looks pretty good (in my opinion). As far as volunteering at the hospital, just make sure it doesn't look like you're deciding between dentistry and medicine. Maybe include something about it in your personal statement that reflects exactly why it was a good experience, and shows your commitment to community service. It's perfectly fine to do non-dentistry activities.

I was the only predent in a team of 22 premeds that worked in the ER at the UCLA Medical Center. It was pretty much the center of my personal statement and the core of all of 5 of the interviews that I got. (I got like 10/16 early interviews of the schools i applied to.) I talked a lot about patient interaction and about how dentistry caters to the mental health of others. Ended up deciding between UoP, UPenn and UMich on Dec 1.

IE, you'll be fine!!!

Doing research and volunteering are great things...whether you're in the ER or Africa. If you want to put a spin on it, just mention how working in the ER helped you understand just how important healthcare in general is to you, and that it was the time spent both in the dental office and the ER that made it clear that dentistry was the type of healthcare you were most interested in. I actually made it a point in my interview to say that when I started school I realized that it was healthcare what I wanted to be in and they immediately asked me the question I had already anticipated "why dentistry and not medical or any other healthcare field" and I used this question to highlight that my experiences in different areas of healthcare actually made it clearer to me that dentistry was exactly what I wanted to do. If it were not for having those alternative experiences I may not be able to honestly answer that question as to why I chose dentistry versus some other healthcare field.

I think that many people when asked the "why dentistry" question just say why they specifically like dentistry so much which is sorta meaningless if you have no other experiences, especially in other areas of healthcare, to relate with your fondness for dentistry.

Whether it's research at an undergrad, med school, dental school, I don't think it really matters - because it's research. Dental related research might give you a leg up but otherwise it doesn't matter where you do research becuase it's research. The main point of research, I think, is to show that you are learning to think about your education in different ways as well as applying it to various situations. There are many positive aspects of it but mainly you are approaching material from a different angle, not just a book. It doesn't really matter where you do it at, as long as its a positive experience for you.