from what's written in this document I get the feeling that AAMC doesn't favor these kinds of EC's
https://www.aamc.org/download/181690/data/guidelinesforstudentsprovidingpatientcare.pdf
Here's the big one that bugs me... This is what AMCAS has to say about it: "
Putting acceptance to medical school and residency training programs at risk. Many pre-medical students believe that the more in-depth clinical experience they have, the stronger their applications will be. However, taking on tasks that are beyond your training could make you look unethical, unknowledgeable about the health professions, irresponsible to admission committees, and may diminish or eliminate your chance for acceptance into medical school. Similarly, medical students who perform procedures beyond their training may negatively impact their chances of matching in residency programs."
In my opinion, I don't think any pre-med wakes up in the morning as a sociopath and says to themselves, "Hmm... I feel like I want to go beyond my scope of practice and purposely inflict pain on others!" The pre-med process is definitely a cut-throat process. Generally speaking, pre-meds will rate different ECs based on what you can do. There's usually a reason why they consider hospital ED volunteering to be "
inferior" to free clinic volunteering. Hint: It's not because they care about helping out poor people! It's because it's common knowledge that as a pre-med, you'll be able to do more in a free clinic than a hospital ED. So there you have a natural pressure to do as much as possible in order to impress ADCOMs. This is why mission trips might be so attractive to some, because they will think that they can do more than a hospital ED or even free clinic.
But as mentioned in my article that I posted, this is where the double-standard comes in. Almost anything besides actually doing skilled procedures is considered fair-game in a free clinic. If you helped to cut sutures or do what not, I doubt ADCOMs would bat an eye (and people on SDN would consider it a
"great" experience). Yet if you did these very same things on an overseas mission trip, you'd be viewed as an immoral bastard. But given the pressure for pre-meds to do the EC arms race in the first place, can you really blame them for trying? I, for one, don't view them as evil sociopaths that should be denied medical school admission, and also have their future residency chances destroyed as well...
Fair enough, although I must add that medical missions will not make you stand out at all. From my own experiences at my undergrad (a premed factory), the vast majority of premeds have done these mission trips or are looking to do one. At this point, it wouldn't be a bad assumption to say that not doing them will make you stand out. You can also tell from this thread that A LOT of people do them. When I first considered medicine as a career, medical missions were the first thing that popped into my mind in terms of "standing out", so it's stand out at all.
I'm in the same boat as you. When I was originally pre-med for a semester, I didn't start local volunteering because I had this fantasy in my head that I would do a mission trip to Brazil, and that it would not only take care of all my volunteer requirements, but also serve as a golden ticket into medical school! Once I actually started using SDN as a non-traditional student years later, I realized that medical mission trips would be a waste. But wait for it... Wait for it... There's a happy ending to this story. Since I started undergrad, I have been to Rio de Janeiro four times. Every single time I had a blast, and you know why? Because I was doing the things
I wanted to do! It was an actual vacation, not a faux medical mission trip!