Does volunteering at an adult daycare count as clinical volunteering?

[deleted1053021]

Hello,

I will be applying to medical school in 2021 and I am wondering if adult daycares count as clinical volunteering? I am volunteering for young adults with disabilities and older adults with memory loss. We also have a nurse and physical therapist on-site to work with the clients. This has been a great learning experience and I intend to continue volunteering post-graduation. Also, my previous experience has included volunteering at a hospital and a hospice. Thanks!

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[begoneneuroticism]

I feel like it could certainly be considered as a clinical volunteering because of the population you are dealing with & where this is taking place. However if you have a plenty of c volunteering, you might as well list it as a non clinical because some schools might like to see both c & nc volunteering in the app. Hope this helps.

 

[LizzyM]

You call them "clients" not "patients". Is it really a clinical setting or is it providing custodial care?

Call it non-clinical.

 

[Goro]

This is one of those rare times I disagree with the wise LizzyM. I consider it clinical experience, as they have medical conditions that put them in this daycare setting. It also puts you up close with our mortality.

 

[readmypostsMD]

I did something really similar and called it clinical

 

[LizzyM]

This is one of those rare times I disagree with the wise LizzyM. I consider it clinical experience, as they have medical conditions that put them in this daycare setting. It also puts you up close with our mortality.

If the OP has done hospital and hospice volunteering, it is quite reasonable to call this non-clinical.

A waitress can serve the elderly and disabled but we don't call that "clinical".

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I see the thin line of ambiguity. To me it's a clinical environment, but as the OP did not list specific roles where they had to be supervised by a health care provider, the tasks could be non-clinical. That said, I probably would be a little more lenient after doing my homework on the facility when reviewing the application (and closely reading the LOR).

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

I lean with @LizzyM on this.

1) The daycare setting itself is not clinical. It isnt a hospital, clinic, private office, etc
2) you are not observing medical staff interacting with each other or with patients
3) Everyone who attends the daycare is at least medically stable and is there for social interaction and psychological well-being, not medical reasons (many might be there to simply give their family a break)

So while you are dealing with a vulnerable population but in a non-clinical setting. I would also like to point out that adcoms can see/read into patterns in an application of someone pushing to hard to make something more than it is. If someone is weak in an area like clinical and then stretches something to say its clinical may simply highlighting the weakness to an evaluator. I always suggest to applicants to be as transparent as possible when describing an EC and let the evaluator judge.

do evaluators pay attention to the classification and hours or more to the description? I heard activities may be split between different evaluators. If so is it based on the classification?

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

The answer is yes.
some pay attention to classification which may get sorted by school before evaluator sees them. Or some may read the description. There are 150+ medical schools so we dont know which do what. This even presents more of risk for mis-classifying. Suppose they split up clinical versus non-clinical. If so, the clinical ones will more likely go to those like clinical experience, as in physicians. So then a practicing doctor is reading your description. If something is at best borderline clinical, like the adult daycare scenario here, it will not impress the practicing physician who is reading it.

Thanks. What do you think of any activity which has both clinical and non-clinical and classified as "Other"?

 

[deleted1053021]

Thank you much for all of the input! If I move the adult daycare volunteering to non-clinical, this leaves me with approximately 60 hours for clinical volunteering. However, I would now have 650 non-clinical hours. I would like to get more clinical volunteering (especially in a hospice) but the volunteering program is on hold at the moment. What are some other clinical volunteering opportunities that you would suggest during the COVID-19 pandemic?