Clinical v. Nonclinical Volunteer Work

[fastboyslim]

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How does it look if a person has done clinical volunteer work but no nonclinical volunteer work? For a while, I thought that as long as the volunteer work was meaningful, it was okay. Now that I'm researching medical school admissions websites more closely, it seems like many schools distinguish between the two types of work in the class profiles of matriculated students.

 

[thebillsfan]

i think your safest bet is to do both, in terms of admissions. med schools want to know that youre invested in the community. while clinical vol. is great, sometimes i feel like nonclinical is even better because it shows you have a commitment to serve. what i mean by that is, working at a homeless shelther is not related to clinical services so will not be (or should not be) affected by receiving an MD degree. volunteering at the hospice is affected by receiving a MD, because will you really still be volunteering there when you can be giving care to those people instead of just talking to them?

in terms of everything else, it's also best to do both. clinical volunteering is great because youll be one step closer to seeing if getting an MD is what you wanna do. at the same time, though, as a UG student (not sure if you are one or not) there's definitely a limited range of things you can do, so if the only type of volunteering you do is clinical based, then you'll feel unfulfilled. thus, it is important also to volunteer non-clinically.

hope that made sense but i can definitely see it not making sense. i'm new to posting, so forgive me.

 

[TexasPhysician]

you need both

 

[GoSpursGo]

Clinical is absolutely necessary. Nonclinical is always nice and will definitely improve your application, and not having it will probably be a negative to your app, but not having it won't be a deal-buster in the same way that not having clinical will be.

 

[LizzyM]

Clinical exposure is essential. It can be volunteer or paid. If you have paid experience, you need not have unpaid experience.

Non-clinical volunteer work is nice but not essential. An adcom will look at how you use your free time and most traditional undergrads can easily spare 2-3 hours/wk to serve others in the community as a literacy volunteer, assistance to the homeless, fatherless, etc. This can include Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, Scouting, coaching little league, etc. A couple hours per week for a couple years is ideal. If you can't manage that, a chunk of time over the summer is good.

 

[JokerMD]

honestly, as long as you have SOME clinical and SOME non-clinical you'll be fine. it's idiotic to think that any of us are doing clinical work just to DECIDE if we want to go into medicine. So just do something you can talk about (doesn't have to be too long).

also, make sure you're always doing something. Again, it doesn't have to be clinical

finally, gpa/mcat are the most important thing, so don't screw that up in your quest to get ECs

 

[fastboyslim]

It's just that time trades off. I have a clinical volunteer opportunity that I enjoy and where I really feel like I'm doing something worthwhile for other people. I've been doing it the last couple years. I do so and so many hours of that each week, and spending more time with a nonclinical volunteer position would mean less time with my clinical volunteer position. I also do research/shadowing that I really enjoy, and I don't think I could add something extra to my schedule without taking something away either in the summer (when I work full time) or in the school year. That's why I'm asking how critical it is to specifically have an involvement in a separate nonclinical volunteer activity.

 

[JokerMD]

don't fret ECs too much. just have SOMETHING so that you're essays are not just long rewordings of "i want to be a doctor to help other people."

im under the impression that the whole point of ECs is just to have something to write in your essays and something to talk about at interviews. SDN has the tendency to show the extreme examples of applicants. most people do not have thousands of hours of clinical exp and thousands of hours of nonclincal exp. what you have is fine (clinical exp + research + shadowing). if you have the numbers, you'll likely be OK 👍

 

[LizzyM]

If you've got clinical volunteer stuff going on, having a non-clinical volunter position isn't essential If your clinical exposure was all shadowing and/or paid employment then having a non-clinical volunteer activity becomes more critical to demonstrate altruism.

 

[fastboyslim]

So for my clinical volunteering, I am a hospice volunteer; I go to a hospice and keep patients/family company, talk/listen to them, help with various errands, and when things are really close to the end, I just stay with the patient and hold the their hand if they are alone. I'm also a bereavement phone call volunteer; I call family of recently deceased hospice patients from my home and just talk to them about how they've been holding up. I've been doing both for about two years.

So my hospice volunteering and bereavement call volunteering are organized through the same program, but the tasks are completely different. Is it possible for me to list bereavement call volunteering as a non-clinical volunteer activity, one that is separate from my clinical hospice volunteering? Originally, I was thinking about listing them as two components of one clinical volunteer activity, since they are both run through the same hospice program, but I'm now realizing that it might be advantageous to list them separately. Now that I think more about it, one could make the case that talking people through a time of grief and loss over the phone straight from my home is nonclinical. As Lizzy M's signature suggests, I'm not close enough to "smell patients", so you can argue it is nonclinical. What do you guys think?

 

[LizzyM]

So for my clinical volunteering, I am a hospice volunteer; I go to a hospice and keep patients/family company, talk/listen to them, help with various errands, and when things are really close to the end, I just stay with the patient and hold the their hand if they are alone. I'm also a bereavement phone call volunteer; I call family of recently deceased hospice patients from my home and just talk to them about how they've been holding up. I've been doing both for about two years.

So my hospice volunteering and bereavement call volunteering are organized through the same program, but the tasks are completely different. Is it possible for me to list bereavement call volunteering as a non-clinical volunteer activity, one that is separate from my clinical hospice volunteering? Originally, I was thinking about listing them as two components of one clinical volunteer activity, since they are both run through the same hospice program, but I'm now realizing that it might be advantageous to list them separately. Now that I think more about it, one could make the case that talking people through a time of grief and loss over the phone straight from my home is nonclinical. As Lizzy M's signature suggests, I'm not close enough to "smell patients", so you can argue it is nonclinical. What do you guys think?

Don't split. Call it "volunteer, clinical" and describe the 2 roles in the free text field. Splitting it looks like padding. If you have volunteer, clinical you don't need "volunteer, non-clinical" and splitting so that you have one of each does not look good.

 

[musik2468]

I'm in a co-ed community service fraternity, for which I do a minimum of 20 community service hours per semester. Projects have ranged from food shelters to human societies. Is this good as a source of non-clinical volunteering? Is it bad that I just sign up to go to these projects on a one-time basis and don't get to go to the same project every week?

 

[NickNaylor]

I'm in a co-ed community service fraternity, for which I do a minimum of 20 community service hours per semester. Projects have ranged from food shelters to human societies. Is this good as a source of non-clinical volunteering? Is it bad that I just sign up to go to these projects on a one-time basis and don't get to go to the same project every week?

I'm assuming you're in APO?

I think APO is a great way to rack up community service hours. Plus I find it more enjoyable to do service as a group rather than by yourself. I think you should probably select a few projects that you do fairly regularly. I stick with two or three each semester that I get all of my required hours from; this way I have a few "high value" (if that makes sense) experiences to talk about, rather than a large bank of hours from random things that I can't really discuss in any detail.