Current Nurse applying to Medical School

[InvisalignTime]

Hey friends,
I've been a Pediatric ICU Nurse for 5 years now and will be applying to medical school next spring. Since I am currently in a Post-Bacc Pre-med Program, I am only working part-time. With most of my days being taken up by school/work there's not many left for extracurricular activities. Also, I'm in my 30's, married, and spend quite a bit of time with responsibilities at work such as committee involvement, ECMO responsibilities, teaching PALS, and mentoring new nurses. My academic advisor has mentioned to me that, besides clinical hours, it's important to have volunteering and research experience. I was curious if anyone else has been in a similar situation, and what tips you may have. Thanks for your help!

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[Newtonian21]

Hey friends,
I've been a Pediatric ICU Nurse for 5 years now and will be applying to medical school next spring. Since I am currently in a Post-Bacc Pre-med Program, I am only working part-time. With most of my days being taken up by school/work there's not many left for extracurricular activities. Also, I'm in my 30's, married, and spend quite a bit of time with responsibilities at work such as committee involvement, ECMO responsibilities, teaching PALS, and mentoring new nurses. My academic advisor has mentioned to me that, besides clinical hours, it's important to have volunteering and research experience. I was curious if anyone else has been in a similar situation, and what tips you may have. Thanks for your help!

Fellow RN here. You need at least one of those( research or volunteer). I'm applying next year as well. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Southplains]

I think your work responsibilities will count towards those "involvements". You have a paragraph to discuss these activities on your application and you can mention the committee and mentoring as leadership experiences, PALS as teaching experience, etc. Since you're a working non-trad I can't imagine they will expect to see volunteering in the same sense as a college pre-med.

 

[Newtonian21]

I think your work responsibilities will count towards those "involvements". You have a paragraph to discuss these activities on your application and you can mention the committee and mentoring as leadership experiences, PALS as teaching experience, etc. Since you're a working non-trad I can't imagine they will expect to see volunteering in the same sense as a college pre-med.

If she is volunteering to teach then it's a good thing.

 

[coppernickel]

Have you participated in any projects re community involvement/engagement/education? I'm sure that'll do. Of course, volunteering is great, shows your heart, but sleep is also an essential task. Idk, I'd ask your advisor what they meant. Maybe they don't really get what it means to do those things you listed... Those are not just clinical hours.

On the other hand, yeah, I can see that you are in a unique position to do research that nonnurse applicants can't. If you're ok waiting a year, then that'd be good.

 

[InvisalignTime]

Thank you all for your feedback, I greatly appreciate it! Coppernickel, in regards to your question about projects, I have been involved in some things, but they were associated with class assignments. For example, in our Community class in Nursing school, we were required to come up with a group presentation that we would then present to a population somewhere in our community. It was a fairly involved production. Also, for Nursing school, we were required to seek out opportunities to provide assistance alongside Professionals in the field, so I volunteered at a YMCA when they were having adult dietary screenings. There were some other things that I was involved in, but again they were supplementary for some of our educational requirements so I didn't know if these things counted or not.

Also, are these involvements supposed to be fairly recent? Because I also have a Bachelor's in Television News and volunteered at our campus News station. This was completely optional for the program, but some of the things I did was go out in the community and interview people and shoot video; I was an anchor for the Newscast that we did at 5 o'clock; I wrote and edited stories; mentored new volunteers; and also was part of the production team for the away basketball games in which we would broadcast the game back to our area so the local viewers could see it.

One other thing I did was for my Minor in Coaching, so I was required to coach a sport at a school of my choosing. I ended up getting an Assistant Coaching position for a Junior High Basketball team. I volunteered there for 2 months until my graduation from college.

Are school-related things usable? And does it matter that some of it was from 10-12 years ago?
Thanks!

 

[reaction mechanisms]

I believe it does matter that those of those ECs are from 10+ years ago. Adcoms want to see that you're currently giving back to your community and helping those less fortunate than you via volunteering. Just as college pre-meds are advised to not use any ECs from high school on their med school applications, I would say than decades old ECs would be frowned upon as well.


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[OncRN2MD]

Hey friends,
I've been a Pediatric ICU Nurse for 5 years now and will be applying to medical school next spring. Since I am currently in a Post-Bacc Pre-med Program, I am only working part-time. With most of my days being taken up by school/work there's not many left for extracurricular activities. Also, I'm in my 30's, married, and spend quite a bit of time with responsibilities at work such as committee involvement, ECMO responsibilities, teaching PALS, and mentoring new nurses. My academic advisor has mentioned to me that, besides clinical hours, it's important to have volunteering and research experience. I was curious if anyone else has been in a similar situation, and what tips you may have. Thanks for your help!

Hey There,
Another fellow RN, now in administration. Sounds like we are in the same boat - I've been wondering about how in the world I will fill in volunteer/research experience. I think I will try to do some occasional Habitat for Humanity projects or something else I can do for 1-2 days at a time during breaks from pre-reqs. The research piece is harder, but do you have a nursing research structure at your hospital? Perhaps they would let you do some kind of project on your unit. That's what I'm considering, I appreciate the feedback on this thread so far.

 

[Javyc0385]

From my experience working along with nurses, I know you will not have an issue finding things in which you can volunteer. The hospital in which I used to work always recruited nurses to volunteer in: blood drives, health fairs, man the nursing first aide unit at diff events (marathons, camps, etc.), and most of these were on the weekends.

If you are looking for research, I would contact the nursing research dept. at your hospital or the nursing education dept. Again, where I worked many nurses did research and presentations like Sepsis Research, Infection Control, wound care etc. Being in nursing does put you at an advantage because if you look around, there is always something for you to do.

 

[vm26]

Hey friends,
I've been a Pediatric ICU Nurse for 5 years now and will be applying to medical school next spring. Since I am currently in a Post-Bacc Pre-med Program, I am only working part-time. With most of my days being taken up by school/work there's not many left for extracurricular activities. Also, I'm in my 30's, married, and spend quite a bit of time with responsibilities at work such as committee involvement, ECMO responsibilities, teaching PALS, and mentoring new nurses. My academic advisor has mentioned to me that, besides clinical hours, it's important to have volunteering and research experience. I was curious if anyone else has been in a similar situation, and what tips you may have. Thanks for your help!

Not sure where you will find the time to volunteer/do research...I was a non-trad PT when I applied to med school, was never questioned about lack of volunteering/research, ditto for one of my med school classmates who was a PA...your clinical experience as a nurse will help you out tremendously in med school, good luck!

 

[bornunderatree]

I applied last cycle and will be attending UCI this fall. I am a Cardiac ICU RN (surgical and medical) of three and a half years.
In my experience, the only schools that cared about research experience were research heavy schools. I suggest you don't apply to those (Stanford, U Chicago, UCSD, Columbia to name a few) as I assume you enjoy the more clinical aspects and would be better supported at a clinically heavy school.
That being said, focus on volunteering. I did tons of guest teaching at my local University (great for academic connections) and worked a crisis hotline for a few years. If you volunteer for your job, take credit for it (for example, precepting without a pay differential is totally volunteering. Same with sitting on committees)!

Best of luck!

 

[jl lin]

Congratulations to all my fellow RNs--and especially the cardiac, surgical/nonsurgical cardiac and peds cardiac surgeons ICU RNs! Been there and have mostly loved it all. Can be very tiring work though. Best wishes to all of you.

 

[InvisalignTime]

Hello again! It's been quite a while since my last post in this thread, so I wanted to kick the tires a little bit. I have been offered three interview invites thus far and wanted to get your takes/experiences on how you approached the interview from a nontraditional/ICU nurse perspective. As ICU nurses, our journeys are markedly different from most, so I was wondering if anyone has pointers on how to exemplify our unique attributes and significant backgrounds in healthcare. Personally, as an ICU nurse, I find it difficult to fully evaluate and describe the all-encompassing aspect of our role because I see it as simply doing my job to the best of my ability so that my patients lives will be improved. However, when I talk with folks that aren't part of the medical field (or people who are just now getting their feet wet), they are almost in awe of our abilities and the strength it takes to care for patients and families dealing with these excruciating illnesses/injuries. In my interviews I want to make sure that I'm painting a colorful picture in regards to my current success as a healthcare clinician, and how these experiences will help me become a great asset to the medical field.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[Crayola227]

I don't know that I would expect your interviewers to be so in awe, that might help

 

[RNthenDoc]

Nobody will be in awe at a medical school.

Around SDN you may even notice hostility!

 

[FCMike11]

I umm, had, maybe 50 hours of shadowing and ~80 hours of volunteering.

That feels very minimal to me (comparatively). Was never mentioned. We talked about my work experience. Interviews at osteopathic and allopathic schools.

It wouldn't hurt to prepare yourself.

I would not invest any time in research unless you have a strong desire for schools that demand as such or for personal/professional interest.

 

[InvisalignTime]

Nobody will be in awe at a medical school.

Around SDN you may even notice hostility!

How did your interviews go? Did you feel it necessary to hone in on your unique experiences as a nurse and provide examples, or did you focus more on describing how your skill sets will translate to the physicians role?

 

[InvisalignTime]

I umm, had, maybe 50 hours of shadowing and ~80 hours of volunteering.

That feels very minimal to me (comparatively). Was never mentioned. We talked about my work experience. Interviews at osteopathic and allopathic schools.

It wouldn't hurt to prepare yourself.

I would not invest any time in research unless you have a strong desire for schools that demand as such or for personal/professional interest.

Appreciate ya. What I keep trying to parse out in my head is the right amount of detail required to answer the questions without babbling on and on versus too little information whereby my body of work is not fully represented.