Do you think volunteering or shadowing should be an important factor in an app ?

[sweetpancakes]

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I have found volunterring and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

 

[sweetpancakes]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

shadow a surgeon or maybe consider a different career if you find it boring

 

[kevster2001]

shadow a surgeon or maybe consider a different career if you find it boring

What part of the shadowing process did you find boring? I understand you dont get to technically do anything but it's still good to just get experience with medicine. Someone people shadow and they realize they dont like medicine as much as they thought they did. MEd schools just want to make sure anyone applying has really had real clinical experience.

 

[Tiger26]

they HAVE to be in your app, so you might as well spin them as well as you can.

 

[sweetpancakes]

shadow a surgeon or maybe consider a different career if you find it boring

There is no correlation between shadowing a doctor and being a good medical student. It is just a waste of time and I already know I want to be a doctor. Save your judgements please.

 

[star22]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

You might look to volunteer doing something more interesting.... ERs are more exciting or at Planned Parenthood (I know they have patient advocate volunteers that hang out with the patients during abortions.)

Also how do you know you would enjoy being a doctor if you don't like the shadowing? Med schools, IMO, are looking for future doctors, not just medical students.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

There is no correlation between shadowing a doctor and being a good medical student. It is just a waste of time and I already know I want to be a doctor. Save your judgements please.

haha I didn't say anything about your boredom in shadowing making you a bad med student. I was just saying that if you found it boring, then the career might not be the best for you. I mean do you really want a job that you hate, oh right, you're probably in it for the money

 

[DrBowtie]

There is no correlation between shadowing a doctor and being a good medical student. It is just a waste of time and I already know I want to be a doctor. Save your judgements please.

It doens't have anything to do with being a successful med student. You could teach a monkey to study enough to pass the boards.

It comes down to "Will you be happy in the profession and practice medicine?" They don't want to train someone who decides a year into residency it isn't what they thought.

 

[sweetpancakes]

You might look to volunteer doing something more interesting.... ERs are more exciting or at Planned Parenthood (I know they have patient advocate volunteers that hang out with the patients during abortions.)

I volunteered at the ER for a few days. All I did was write the person's name down on the admitting form as soon as they walked into the ER.

I also saw a few surgeries but of course understood nothing and I couldnt see much anyway. They dont cut the person open from gut to gill. They only cut a tiny whole in ther person and you cant see anything.

I think volunteering and shadowing are just more hoops to jump through. Waste of time.

 

[Will Ferrell]

shadow a surgeon or maybe consider a different career if you find it boring

He never said the work of the physician he shadowed was boring. The OP just thinks standing around an office and twiddling his thumbs is boring. It's like watching baseball is very boring, but playing baseball is very fun. Please, don't tell others to consider different careers for reasons like this.

OP, just do the minimum volunteering and shadowing that is "required" and then do some other activity, non-career related, that you enjoy.

 

[zimmie256]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

I think for a field like medicine that requires so much time, training, commitment, it is important to try and get an idea of what it is like and if it fits for you personally. However, I think you raise an interesting point about the virtual "requirement" to do volunteering/shadowing for admissions. Are these activities really the best way to gain that exposure? Seems like they at least fall into the "tried and true" category, but if you have other ideas about ways to show adcoms that you know what medicine really is (not the romanticized tv version) and why you'll be good at it, then I say go for it.

 

[ND2005]

troll anyone?

I have had very minimal shadowing/volunteering experiences. But I just loved them.

I got to see a PFO repair in a cath lab. The cardiologist was super-cool and explained things pretty much step-by-step. It's just amazing that we can repair a hole in someone's heart so quickly and easily. Really awe-inspiring.

At another shadowing session, the doc handed me the stethoscope and let me listen to a patient's heart murmur. A really insignificant thing, something I'm sure nearly every other pre-med has done, but it was just so cool to me. Made me so excited for the future. (And of course I had no clue what I was supposed to be listening to...but I'll worry about that later).

 

[star22]

I volunteered at the ER for a few days. All I did was write the person's name down on the admitting form as soon as they walked into the ER.

I also saw a few surgeries but of course understood nothing and I couldnt see much anyway. They dont cut the person open from gut to gill. They only cut a tiny whole in ther person and you cant see anything.

I think volunteering and shadowing are just more hoops to jump through. Waste of time.

My first day shadowing I also thought was boring because I didn't know what was going on. But I started asking tons of questions (the purpose of different tests and procedures, any vocab I didn't understand, etc) and the doc was happy to explain. Now I think its awesome.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

He never said the work of the physician he shadowed was boring. The OP just thinks standing around an office and twiddling his thumbs is boring. It's like watching baseball is very boring, but playing baseball is very fun. Please, don't tell others to consider different careers for reasons like this.

OP, just do the minimum volunteering and shadowing that is "required" and then do some other activity, non-career related, that you enjoy.

the point is that he did shadowing, so he did jump through the hoops he needed to. I guess the OP doesn't realize that you don't have to shadow doctors for months to make med schools happy.

My problem with the OP is that he questions the need to shadow. Using your analogy, how would you even have fun playing baseball if you had never watched it before to get a general idea of WTF the general procedure is? Since med schools invest much time and energy into each student, you can't just have people come into school without having demonstrated some interest in medicine, or else like Brett said, people would drop out and there would be problems.

 

[Law2Doc]

I think volunteering and shadowing are just more hoops to jump through. Waste of time.

There is very little you do as a premed that is going to be useful to you as a physician. It is all hoops to jump through. Suck it up and try to put a happy face on it -- everybody has to do it. Numerical stats have little correlation to how you will do as a doctor (although there is arguably some correlation as to how you will do in the basic science years and step 1), which is largely a patient driven service industry. Someone with a 4.0/40 and no outside experiences would thus fall remarkably short of what adcoms are seeking.

The basic goal is for you to have some semblance of an idea as to what physicians do for a living. Most of that is dealing with patients, so exposure to patients through volunteering and the like is of some value. There are infinite potential volunteer and shadowing jobs, so one would hope you can find one that is tolerable. Someone who expresses disinterest in dealing with patients, even as a volunteer, might be seen a red flag for adcoms.

 

[noonday]

i agree with the poster who suggested that you do medical volunteer work that means something to you. i don't know where you live, but there are a ton of options just about anywhere if you look for them and are creative about what you draw into the catchment of medical volunteering.

planned parenthood always take volunteers to become community health educators, and being able to convey medical information to patients is a great skill to show med schools that you have. you could get your EMT-B and actually USE it...pick up part time work with an ambulance company, offer your services for free to youth organizations, or get into a higher-level ER volunteering position b/c you have the training to do it. volunteer with te Red Cross. become a certified CPR trainer and work training people in your community in how to do CPR. and there are free clinics in most major cities that will train volunteer lay healthcare workers, and you could be an HIV counselor, or give vaccinations, or do STD screening and safer sex education, or work a rape crisis hotline or as a support person in the ER for rape trauma, or, or, or....

you don't need to "shadow." you can actually *do* something good for your community with the side benefit of it looking good on AMCAS. i think it's the first part, the doing something good without recompense (although you do get recompense, just not monetary) that means as much as exposure to medicine.

 

[jackieMD2007]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

Volunteering is NOT a waste of time. There are a lot of things at the hospital that volunteers do that make things better for patients. Non-medical things that the medical staff doesn't always have time to do, as well as "behind the scenes" things that happen. At my hospital, volunteers deliver flowers to patient rooms, run patient programs, visit patients, walk families to patient rooms or the cafeteria, etc.

Even if the family member is in the hospital for something very minor, it is traumatic for the patients' family JUST to be at the hospital. Many people are afraid of just being in hospitals. Often volunteer services can help not only patients but their families as well.

 

[frany584]

I think it largely depends on your experiences. I LOVED volunteering in the ER and the nurses/doctors let me see everything there, it even allowed me to consider specializing in ER medicine. Also I worked with a physician who treated autistic children and those with developmental disabilities and I loved that as well; or you could try non-medically related experiences such as Big Brothers, Big Sisters?? It all depends on what interests you. Yeah, some volunteering experiences stink and they kind of hide you in the corner so you 'arent in the way' and other experiences I just thought were boring. For instance, I shadowed a radiologist and knew I would never want to specialize in radiology. I don't think its a waste of time, it allows ppl to decide what specialties they enjoy in or even if they want to study medicine at all.

 

[Carmenita79]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

If there is a free clinic in your area, that might be more valuable. They tend to give volunteers more responsibility. I thought shadowing was valuable even if it only lets you ask yourself if you could see yourself doing this doctor's job all day everyday.

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

I volunteered at the ER for a few days. All I did was write the person's name down on the admitting form as soon as they walked into the ER. I also saw a few surgeries but of course understood nothing and I couldnt see much anyway. They dont cut the person open from gut to gill. They only cut a tiny whole in ther person and you cant see anything.
I think volunteering and shadowing are just more hoops to jump through. Waste of time.

Well, yes, but... what did you expect out of volunteering? They can't put you in charge of more important stuff if you don't know how to do anything. You are there to help with all the little things the staff doesn't have time to do and -- if you luck out -- a physician will take the time to show/teach you something.

I get bored in the ER sometimes too so I'll watch how the doctors interact with the patients in my spare time or talk to the nurses. That's not a wasted experience in my opinion.

 

[QofQuimica]

I have found volunterring and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

I think that this question has nothing to do with the MCAT, and so I'm going to move your thread to the Pre-Allo forum.

 

[Carmenita79]

There is no correlation between shadowing a doctor and being a good medical student. It is just a waste of time and I already know I want to be a doctor. Save your judgements please.

I am just curious how you know you want to be a doctor? From what I have heard, this is a question that will come up over and over during the application process. If you have had other compelling experiences then maybe volunteering and shadowing won't be as important, but if not, then, like others have said, you should find something that you enjoy and could speak positively about in an interview.

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

I think that this question has nothing to do with the MCAT, and so I'm going to move your thread to the Pre-Allo forum.

S/he's already got one here, so you can delete this one.

 

[riff raff]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

I will be completely honest, my volunteering experience at the hospital was a joke. I did bitch work for everyone around the hospital. It was clear to me that the hospital staff had worked with lots of volunteers in the past, and had grown accustom to making them their own personal servants to do work that they didn't want to do. It didn't give me insight into the career at all and I would have rather watched paint dry.

Now when I shadowed a dermatologist, that was pretty cool and reaffirmed why I wanted to go into medicine. But volunteering through the hospital was dreadful for me, just bored me out of my mind and was a complete joke.

 

[Zanoman]

...

 

[lilnoelle]

I shadowed some in high school and also thought some of it was boring... but then, after working a few various jobs, I realized that most of life is not as exciting as I expected it to be. Once I learned a little bit more about medicine and about the human body, and matured some, I realized how much I want to be a doctor and how great it would be to have the knowledge and experience to help people to live healthier lives. Now, every experience I have with a physician is a learning experience that I value.

 

[gregMD]

volunteering is a giant hoop - if it wasn't required, 90% of people wouldn't do it. Do i think its important? - not in the least. It wont in any way, shape or form make you a better student, or doctor in the long run.... its just busy work.

 

[wendywellesley]

I have found volunteering and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

almost every interview i had (about 10) asked me to tell them about my clinical experiences, so yeah, it's important.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

volunteering is a giant hoop - if it wasn't required, 90% of people wouldn't do it. Do i think its important? - not in the least. It wont in any way, shape or form make you a better student, or doctor in the long run.... its just busy work.

there's no volunteer requirement, look in the msar there's a significant percentage of students who do not do volunteer work. Clinical experience is what they want, for some, volunteering in health care settings fits this unstated requirement, and others find other ways to get clinical exposure.

 

[Compozine]

Come on guys. I think a lot of you are talking up your volunteer experiences. I volunteered in a hospital ICU for two years and it was the most boring thing on the planet. All I got to do was answer phones and run errands for the nurses. But this how it is for everyone. Nobody gets to do anything major. If you are lucky and hook up with a really cool doctor, he or she might let to take a blood pressure or watch a surgery. But really, none of this really tells you what it is like to be a doctor. You have to find out for yourself...by actually getting the MD. The way you get the MD is to jump through these stupid hoops and do what the adcoms want. From what I have read on here, a lot of you guys are posting your experiences using the tone that you used during your interviews. I know, because I did the phony "oh it was a great experience" thing too.

 

[Law2Doc]

Come on guys. I think a lot of you are talking up your volunteer experiences. I volunteered in a hospital ICU for two years and it was the most boring thing on the planet. All I got to do was answer phones and run errands for the nurses. But this how it is for everyone. Nobody gets to do anything major. If you are lucky and hook up with a really cool doctor, he or she might let to take a blood pressure or watch a surgery. But really, none of this really tells you what it is like to be a doctor. You have to find out for yourself...by actually getting the MD. The way you get the MD is to jump through these stupid hoops and do what the adcoms want. From what I have read on here, a lot of you guys are posting your experiences using the tone that you used during your interviews. I know, because I did the phony "oh it was a great experience" thing too.

Your role will be limited, but the things you can observe really might not be. The goal is to use these experiences to help you decide if this the the route you want to take for your career; puffing up the app should be somewhat secondary, as there is no point getting into a school if you ultimately won't like the career. It is a pretty bad idea to decide if you want to be a doctor just by getting an MD, as by then you will be $200k in debt and stuck.

 

[riff raff]

"Do you think volunteering or shadowing should be an important factor in an app ?"

Yes


Hey Riff Raff, GO GREEN!

lol GO WHITE! you are the 3rd spartan I've seen on here, cool stuff 👍 Good luck with the app process 😀

ps: sorry for the thread jacking, but as spartans, when someone says go green it is like a contractual obligation to respond go white

 

[noonday]

in my opinion (mostly in reply to the OP and compozine):

1.) we all here are educated people with some level of privilege by the sheer fact that a.) we're hanging out on the internet/have computers/have internet access and b.) that we're all able to handle the time, cost, etc. of applying to med school. to me, this means we, by taking education and accepting privilege, have entered into a contract with society that we will give to it as much as we can. i think volunteerism is the responsibility of all people with the ability to do so. but then, my volunteer work led me to want to change careers to medicine, medicine was not my drive to do the volunteering...

2.) there is never, ever, a good excuse for being bored. anyone can learn something from any experience, you just have to try to figure out what that is and, if necessary, make the opportunity within the situation. stuck transporting patients? talk to the patient (if awake), try to assure them (within reason), learn something about them, as the dr/nurse more about their case to get some insight, etc. stuck filling out forms? use it as an opportunity to learn something about billing/medicare/insurance/etc. in nearly every setting most people will be more than happy to teach you if you don't know -- you just have to ask. you have to admit you don't know, and ask, and not expect it to be handed to you. and this both helps you learn something and makes the person you're asking feel good about themselves because they can help you and they can feel like the expert they are.


EDIT: and as for "no one gets to do anything major," not true. you just need to invest time into getting trained to do something "major." sure, you won't be doing open heart surgery, but like i said earlier, get and USE and EMT-B, and the ER at the hospital will give you much more interesting things to do as a volunteer. or invest a few months in getting trained to be a lay healthcare worker for a free clinic, and you'll even be seeing clients on your own, if only for vaccinations or HIV test, but it's all you doing the care...

 

[Avalanche21]

Is this troll season or something? I've seen a few "banned for trolling" signs around...

 

[Vox Animo]

It doens't have anything to do with being a successful med student. You could teach a monkey to study enough to pass the boards.

It comes down to "Will you be happy in the profession and practice medicine?" They don't want to train someone who decides a year into residency it isn't what they thought.

What type of monkey are we talking about here?

cuz if your thinking rhesus monkey, thats just ridiculous.

Ape may be a different story.

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

What type of monkey are we talking about here?

cuz if your thinking rhesus monkey, thats just ridiculous.

Ape may be a different story.

Did you ever read about the experiment where they tested what would happen if you gave computers to a bunch of chimpanzees? It was a riff on the old saying, "given infinite time, chimpanzees with typewriters would eventually write out the complete works of Shakespeare."

In reality -- within limited time of course -- the chimpanzees:
1) Tried to eat it
2) Tried to break it, probably so they could eat it
3) defecated on it
4) pressed 's' a LOT

 

[Vox Animo]

Did you ever read about the experiment where they tested what would happen if you gave computers to a bunch of chimpanzees? It was a riff on the old saying, "given infinite time, chimpanzees with typewriters would eventually write out the complete works of Shakespeare."

In reality -- within limited time of course -- the chimpanzees:
1) Tried to eat it
2) Tried to break it, probably so they could eat it
3) defecated on it
4) pressed 's' a LOT

Interesting. So Brett's case just got a little thinner. The time frame the gave for that though was like 1 followed by a couple hundred zeros years. That would be a long time for a chimp to go without sh*tting or eating.

 

[thinknofu3]

there is never, ever, a good excuse for being bored. anyone can learn something from any experience, you just have to try to figure out what that is and, if necessary, make the opportunity within the situation.

and as for "no one gets to do anything major," not true.

I completely agree - in all the time I spent shadowing docs, the most important things I learned had nothing to do with medical treatments. I've always felt (and I really mean this) that it's just as important to watch how physicians interact with their patients and other staff. Just about everyone who gets into med school has what it takes academically to be a competent physician. To me, the difference between an okay doctor and a truly good doctor is found in the ability to communicate and interact well with patients. And while it's true that you can't "do much" in terms of medicine before you get to med school, there are no regulations about how much you can learn watching doctors interact with their patients. There's a goldmine there - you just have to see it. Because I truly believe in those interactions, more so than any medical textbook, you see the true meaning of what it is to be a doctor.

 

[Jacks Mannequin]

I completely agree - in all the time I spent shadowing docs, the most important things I learned had nothing to do with medical treatments. I've always felt (and I really mean this) that it's just as important to watch how physicians interact with their patients and other staff. It's there that you really learn what it means to be a doctor, and the difference between a good doctor. Just about everyone who gets into med school has what it takes academically to be a competent physician. To me, the difference between an okay doctor and a truly good doctor is found in the ability to communicate and interact well with patients. And while it's true that you can't "do much" in terms of medicine before you get to med school, there are no regulations about how much you can learn watching doctors interact with their patients. There's a goldmine there - you just have to see it. Because I truly believe in those interactions, more so than any medical textbook, you see the true meaning of what it is to be a doctor.

Exactly. I never understood why people who shadow want to write down and memorize every single illness and treatment they hear about. The important part is physician-patient interaction and seeing if you actually want to do this, not actually learning medicine itself; you'll be doing enough of that later on.

 

[LizzyM]

I completely agree - in all the time I spent shadowing docs, the most important things I learned had nothing to do with medical treatments. I've always felt (and I really mean this) that it's just as important to watch how physicians interact with their patients and other staff. It's there that you really learn what it means to be a doctor, and the difference between a good doctor. Just about everyone who gets into med school has what it takes academically to be a competent physician. To me, the difference between an okay doctor and a truly good doctor is found in the ability to communicate and interact well with patients. And while it's true that you can't "do much" in terms of medicine before you get to med school, there are no regulations about how much you can learn watching doctors interact with their patients. There's a goldmine there - you just have to see it. Because I truly believe in those interactions, more so than any medical textbook, you see the true meaning of what it is to be a doctor.

The other skill is that of becoming comfortable with strangers: practicing compassion (sharing their pain or sorrow) & empathy, learning how to make small talk as well as the more intimate talk that is required to obtain sensitive information, learning to deal emotionally with your own discomfort with disfigured and disabled individuals, odors, odd behaviors, etc. and developing the humility that is needed to join the ranks at the bottom of the medical hierarchy.

 

[Parietal Lobe]

Come on guys. I think a lot of you are talking up your volunteer experiences. I volunteered in a hospital ICU for two years and it was the most boring thing on the planet. All I got to do was answer phones and run errands for the nurses. But this how it is for everyone. Nobody gets to do anything major. If you are lucky and hook up with a really cool doctor, he or she might let to take a blood pressure or watch a surgery. But really, none of this really tells you what it is like to be a doctor. You have to find out for yourself...by actually getting the MD. The way you get the MD is to jump through these stupid hoops and do what the adcoms want. From what I have read on here, a lot of you guys are posting your experiences using the tone that you used during your interviews. I know, because I did the phony "oh it was a great experience" thing too.

I'm actually getting to do a lot. I've taken vitals (pulse, blood pressure, temp, respiration) of more than a dozen patients and it's only my third day!

 

[akinf]

You don't have to do medical work or boring volunteer work to get into medicine. I think you should do activities you find interesting and you will enjoy, however, try to pick something will allow you develop leadership, communication, and interpersonal/social skills. These are all attributes I assume medical schools are trying to look for that makes it important to do these extracurricular activities. Nowadays, most people's inner crowd consists of students in their classes, they just want to ensure that you have been exposed to people unlike yourself and know how to handle the situations that come up. In medicine, you will constantly be seeing people who are very much unlike yourself.

 

[MEG@COOL]

I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

I agree.

 

[Igni Fera]

I have found volunterring and shadowing to be very boring. I havent done much of it at all. My experiene as a volunteer in a hospital included wheeling patients to meeting rooms. My shadowing experience included following an internal medicine doctor around his clinic. Neither experience was valuable in the least.

I wish shadowing and volunteering was not required. I think both are a waste of time and have nothing to do with being a successful medical student.

How would you really know you want to be a doc if you have no direct experience with the day to day of it? By direct experience, I mean observing your internal responses to the clinical environment. How much you make of the experience (or little, as the OPs case may be) is a huge reflection on your personal maturity and readiness to take on the demands of the profession.

In my four days of volunteering so far, I have helped move ICU patients to get CTs and other tests, witnessed a trauma code in the ED, viewed w/ explanation a CT of a pt with a ventricullar shunt, tried to lighten a pt's pain with distracting conversation, watched an unstable ventricullar heart monitor jump around alarmingly as we moved a pt for tests (along with an RN transporter in case the pt coded en route), seen a child in psychiatric distress be transported in restraints, moved two bodies to the morgue (including an infant), looked at a closet full of donor brains, etc... I find all of this veeery interesting... on the other hand, a friend of mine cannot stomach even the slightest reference to these things.

Maybe, OP, you need to find a place to get clinical experience that will allow more interesting things to witness...

 

[DRDARIA]

How would you really know you want to be a doc if you have no direct experience with the day to day of it? By direct experience, I mean observing your internal responses to the clinical environment.

Absolutely true. I was convinced I wanted to go into a specific specialty all the way until the start of fourth year, when I actually did my elective in the specialty and realized I really didn't like it at all. All my previous "small doses" of that specialty hadn't prepared me for what it was like day-to-day.

I would also echo all those who said find something you enjoy doing. If you are volunteering at something you don't find interesting, you are going to dislike it. I didn't do ANY of my volunteering in a hospital. Most of my volunteering was in things I loved doing that were quite far from medicine.
Some schools are going to be looking for a sustained and meaningful volunteer experience. As a previous interviewer, I can tell you with certainty that we can easily smell the "check the box" volunteering, and at least where I went to school that would have not have helped you much, and if you and in some cases could have counted AGAINST you.

 

[91946]

The Op might be a troll, but he or she did raise some interesting point. I volunteer at the Radiology deparment in a children's hospital while I was in school. I was told by the volunteer coordinator that it would be an interesting learning experience since I'm interested in X-Ray and instrumentation. Instead, they sent me to the filing room and handed me a ton of patient's file to put away. The only interest I had was reading over the patient's file and seeing what kinda diagnosis was on there.

 

[jojocola]

OP being a troll or not, it brought me about an important question. How does one become a shadow? I'm going to start volunteering soon and it seems to me that most shadows have some kind of affiliation with the doctor. Btw I i haven't seen my general doctor in like 2 years. heh.

 

[SeminoleFan3]

I volunteered about ~100hrs in 6 months. I also shadowed a family practice doc, and ER physician, and a surgeon. The volunteering was extremely boring (answering phones, keeping logs, etc). The shadowing, on the other hand, was pretty awesome. To see the patient interaction, to see them interact with the staff, to see the procedures...good stuff.

 

[Gabby]

OP being a troll or not, it brought me about an important question. How does one become a shadow? I'm going to start volunteering soon and it seems to me that most shadows have some kind of affiliation with the doctor. Btw I i haven't seen my general doctor in like 2 years. heh.

There are several ways to do it, but you have to be proactive. You can call up doctors and ask if you can shadow them. You can turn to your family physician. Or you can become the best volunteer you can and then, after some time has passed, talk to your supervisor about whether or not he/she will introduce you to a doctor who's open to med students shadowing them. Before you do that last one, make sure you build a relationship of some sort with the supervisor so he/she can sell the idea to the doctor.