Brand new to SDN today! Love this site and have been following it for about a month and just got around to joining today. But I have a few question I haven't been able to find answers for. What does clinical volunteer work involve? Is it much different than volunteering in a hospital? And when people reference the research they have been a part of, what does this exactly mean? What does the research entail, and how does one get involved in something like this? Sorry if this has already been discussed in a previous thread or if these are dumb questions. Thanks!
Clinical volunteering? Research?
- Thread starter pdc790
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Getting patient contact...like doing vitals, moving and cleaning patients, talking to patients, etc.....just ask for that type of volunteering.
Good places are hospitals, hospices, free med clinics...
Research can be found by looking around campus and see what professors are doing research and find something that you like. It depends on the research on what you do...get info from patients or do experiments.
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My sig line used to read "If you can smell patients, it is a clinical experience." As a corollary, if you are volunteering in a setting where you are close enough to smell patients, then that's clinical volunteer work.
Research is usually with a faculty member at your school during the school year, or during the summer at your school or elsewhere (a medical school or a research university or a research institute). You can begin by talking to a professor in biology, chemistry, psychology, anthropology (those are the usual ones for pre-meds). You may start out doing simple tasks and learning the ropes and may progress to testing a hypothesis including trouble-shooting why things go wrong. Ideally, you'd like to get to a point where you can get funding for your project (to pay for your time over the summer, for examle), present your work at a conference, and/or publish a report of your research findings.
