"Average" amount of clinical experience?

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zinciest

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Has anyone ever bothered to find out how many years/hours of clinical experience that average matriculant has? I don't have a copy of MSAR, so I don't know if it's in there. How much would you guess if it's never been quantified?
 
zinciest said:
Has anyone ever bothered to find out how many years/hours of clinical experience that average matriculant has? I don't have a copy of MSAR, so I don't know if it's in there. How much would you guess if it's never been quantified?
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On here, I have always heard 150+hrs over 1.5 yrs.....
 
FlowRate said:
Sounds like a lot to me, cuz I don't have that many, but it actually seems pretty reasonable. Think 100 hours volunteering (20 weeksish) and 50 hours shadowing (5-15 visits) over that amount of time, and it makes sense =)
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that was actually just for volunteering...

shadowing is another 60-80hrs over a couple of different docs.
 
J DUB said:
On here, I have always heard 150+hrs over 1.5 yrs.....
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Yeah, that seems like a pretty reasonable estimate what most schools are expecting. Some schools want a lot more than that but 150 hrs clinical is probably fine for 70-90% of schools (as well as a good 40-60 hrs shadowing -- they are separate requirements). More non-trad friendly schools might say several hundred and one top school wants a minimum of 500, but that's definitely out of the ordinary.
 
Very easy! start a pole. and you will see where is average.

i am 160+ at a hospital

and bits and pieces elsewhere.
 
FlowRate said:
Gee whiz. Ya'll are reminding me how much I'm lacking on sheer # of hours.
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They're not hard to get. Get a position or two and you won't even know you're getting them.
I forget the exact numbers, but when I added mine up (and by adding, I really mean multiplying averages), it was like 300+ hrs volunteer (150 clinical), 1200+ paid clinical, 600 research.... like 24 shadowing (lol... should probably do some more of that, I suppose!)

Honestly, though, once you get a position somewhere, you won't even really think about the number of hours you have. You just do the work and have fun and then one day an app asks you "how many hours of _____ have you completed?" and you get to fill in some enormous number that really means nada in terms of what you learned from the experience!
 
Like GPAs, MCATs and anything else that's a number, there's a range where the difference is meaningless. Anything more or less than that will be more interesting (maybe not for the better). What's more important is the quality of those hours. A lot of hospital volunteer positions are terrible and you just wheel patients from point A to point B. Thats boring. Do something that involves a lot of prolonged patient contact and be able to articulate some meaningful experiences during the interview. otherwise it's just another checkbox
 
Ativanigans said:
Like GPAs, MCATs and anything else that's a number, there's a range where the difference is meaningless. Anything more or less than that will be more interesting (maybe not for the better). What's more important is the quality of those hours. A lot of hospital volunteer positions are terrible and you just wheel patients from point A to point B. Thats boring. Do something that involves a lot of prolonged patient contact and be able to articulate some meaningful experiences during the interview. otherwise it's just another checkbox
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Repeating this for emphasis:
Quality>>>>>>>Quantity.
 
I remember seeing a spreadsheet with the average number of hours per school. I think it was somewhere between 60 and 70 hours of volunteering? I'm going to do 40-50 hours. I can't stand doing anymore because it's such a stupid waste of time.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Classifying helping others for free as "a stupid waste of time" is a suspect thing to say for somebody that wants to make a career out of helping others.
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Performing surgery vs. pushing around wheelchairs and delivering food all day.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Someone's gotta do it...med schools try to weed out people like you, but I'm sure you're smart enough to do a few hours to give the impression of being willing to help others.
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Dont get on your high horse. If he's smart, i'd rather have him as a doc than someone that really loves pushing wheelchairs
 
~50 hours hospital volunteering (8 months-ish)
~10 hours shadowing

I was worried these below average numbers would be troublesome, but one of my interviewers commented that these were a lot 😕

ended up not keeping me out.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Someone's gotta do it...med schools try to weed out people like you, but I'm sure you're smart enough to do a few hours to give the impression of being willing to help others.
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I don't know about you, but during my ER volunteering, I felt more like a liability than a help. I was basically slowing the nurses down with my dumb questions. They operate well (or even better) without me, and I have enough self-awareness personally to realize that. When you volunteer at a hospital, you rarely make a difference. There, I said it. Not saying it's useless because you can still get stuff out of it, but I don't think it should be as essential as it is to admissions.

I treated it like a hoop to jump through. I feel like a lot of us do. If you get a lot out of it, fine. But my 50 hours in the ER were miserable.
 
I don't like my hospital volunteering job either. It's not that I dislike volunteering, I just dislike pointless volunteering. I love the work I do at a nursing home, and what I do at a women's health clinic. But it's naive to think that all volunteering is equally necessary and equally helpful.

OP, I think free or low-cost clinics are great places to volunteer. It's usually easier to do direct patient care at places like that than at a hospital, and you'll actually feel like you're making a difference.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Sounds like you had an unpleasant experience...I must say my experience has been much different. The ER I shadow/volunteer at is a teaching hospital, so I get to work hand-in-hand with 3rd and 4th year med students, residents, and attendings. Guess it comes down to the specific hospital and their policies.
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This sounds like delusions of granduer. . . care to elaborate on what kind of work your doing "hand-in-hand" with med students & attendings?
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Helped a resident place a central line, check on patients' status in the ER and report it back to the attendings, check for motor and neurological function, had the pleasure of feeling a guy's hernia the other day.
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:laugh:

I'm really surprised they're letting you do that. If you're a volunteer, it's usually against hospital policy for you to do anything other than stock shelves with blankets.
 
rHinO1 said:
This sounds like delusions of granduer. . . care to elaborate on what kind of work your doing "hand-in-hand" with med students & attendings?
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He's not the only one.

As a volunteer (technically an intern), I have gotten to assist in putting in lines, hooking up EKGs, restraining pts, etc.

As paid staff, I've also gotten to administer meds.

Some places will give you quite a few types of opportunities if you seek them out.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
I'm surprised how much they let me do too...but it's a teaching hospital and they have a lot of 3rd and 4th year med students and residents running around so the distinctions between us are somewhat blurred in the eyes of the patients.
The physicians I shadow strongly encourage me to be actively involved with the patients...when we were speaking with the hernia guy the doc insisted that I put on a pair of gloves and feel it. 🙂
It was interesting getting to operate the ultrasound for the central line too...them allowing me to do that was the most surprising.
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You are certainly a rare, special case. Congrats. For most of us, generic hospital/ER volunteering sucks. I'm going to be doing hospice soon because I feel it's one of the few volunteering positions that's really patient-focused, not making-EMTs-more-bored-focused.


PS. Go Wolf Pack, FUNLV, and all that jazz that I don't actually care about =P
 
Research, volunteering and clinical do NOT have to be separate things. Get creative, people!!!

Do research that involves patient contact, like administering tests.

Or do volunteering that involves "shadowing." Work with doctors but actually DO something useful.

Or do clinical that involves volunteering.

I think pure shadowing is stupid and I never did it. It is very low on the "quality" standard that posters have discussed. And it looks like a "check the box" activity rather than something you care about.

I bet if you studied the applications of very successful applicants, you would find very little "pure" shadowing.
 
Sheldon Cooper said:
Would you rather have somebody that is smart and really enjoys helping others, or someone who is smart and self-serving?
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Right, because most pre-meds are volunteering in the ER because they "really enjoy helping others."

Reminds me of this:
Soup-Kitchen Volunteers Hate College-Application-Padding Brat

SEATTLE—Volunteers at the Pike Street Salvation Army have grown to hate college-application padder Justin Malveaux, 17, sources reported Monday.

Enlarge Image Soup-Kitchen Volunteers

Malveaux, who is passionately dedicated to getting into Stanford.
"It's not that Justin doesn't work hard, because he does," said Karla Perkins, 44, weeknight coordinator at the downtown Seattle soup kitchen. "He does whatever you ask of him, and he's pleasant and polite, always complimenting everyone. Still, I can't stand the little Stanford-application-padding ****er."

Perkins met Malveaux in February, when the Bellingham West High School junior submitted a résumé and cover letter requesting a volunteer position.

"Justin said he wanted to help those less fortunate than him, and also to get his volunteering out of the way so he can concentrate on AP classes next year," Perkins said. "Stanford is his first choice, and UCLA is his 'safety.' He also plans to apply to Washington State 'just for laughs,' whatever that means."

An honors student and active participant in five extracurricular groups, Malveaux said he is committed to making himself an indispensable member of the soup kitchen's Tuesday-evening crew for the four months he plans to be there.

"This experience will be invaluable when I have to write my personal essay, which counts for a lot with Stanford," Malveaux said. "It's the kind of real-world growth experience that goes over huge with the admissions people. And, if I ever need a recommendation, there are several people here who I think I've bonded with enough to ask."

The staff's disdain for the upper-middle-class Malveaux went largely unspoken during his first month and a half at the center, manifesting itself primarily in the occasional eye roll. On March 18, however, a floodgate of vitriol was opened when Malveaux asked staff coordinator Jamal Washburn to leave the employee break room, mistaking him for a homeless man.

"I hate that little rich-kid bastard," Washburn said. "He'll be out the door the second he can say he volunteered here for four months. Or, as he'll put it, 'February 2003 to May 2003.'"

Despite their hatred of him, staffers admitted that Malveaux has been helpful. According to Perkins, he has used his "fresh perspective" to increase efficiency, placing a clipboard at the end of the kitchen table and inviting shelter patrons to sign up for the next evening's meal so that the kitchen might better predict attendance.

To combat staff tardiness, Malveaux suggested that volunteers be permitted three missed shifts before being barred from working at the center.

"As much as I hate to admit it, he has made some improvements," Perkins said. "But he does it in this smug way, like we're so lucky to be graced with the presence of this brilliant, college-bound prodigy, even if only for a few precious months."

"That sunny, can-do attitude is really starting to grate on me," employee Randy Louis said. "Just pass out the tater tots, prepster."

The staff generally uses the 20 minutes Malveaux spends sweeping the parking lot each Tuesday as an opportunity to exchange stories of his naivete.

"A homeless woman came in wearing a Diabetes Awareness Fun Run T-shirt she got from a box at the shelter," Perkins said. "Justin was saying how inspiring it was that this woman could still care about others, even with all her troubles."

Perkins said she finds Malveaux's attempts to connect with her condescending.

"He's finally stopped asking me where I see myself in five years," Perkins said. "I honestly think he thought he was challenging me to ask myself questions I wouldn't ordinarily ask. Like people in my social strata aren't capable of introspection without the help of somebody better-educated."

"Now, he just talks about himself," Perkins continued. "He wants to be a writer, but he might be an international human-rights lawyer. He gave me his solemn word that, whatever he decides, he will use his skills for the betterment of the world. Thank God, now I can sleep at night."

At the end of each shift, Malveaux records his "hours worked" in his PDA and makes a point of getting Perkins to sign off on it—a ritual Perkins has grown to detest.

"He can talk all he wants about how enriching this experience has been, but it's completely obvious that all he's thinking about is how good this is going to look on his transcript," Perkins said. "Here at the Salvation Army, we try to appreciate all the help God sends our way, but I draw the line with that little ****."
Click to expand...

Sheldon Cooper said:
Helped a resident place a central line, check on patients' status in the ER and report it back to the attendings, check for motor and neurological function, had the pleasure of feeling a guy's hernia the other day.
Click to expand...
Or not.
 
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