Getting great volunteer experience?

[crzynikki]

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I've been searching the forum and see a lot of people with really amazing volunteer/ working hospital experiences. I was just wondering how do I go about getting these noteworthy positions (non-clerical)? I know I want to be a pediatrician (if I ever get to med. school), so I'd like to do somthing oriented to that. I've been going through different hospital web pages and all that they have listed for volunteer opportunites are mostly clerical things, and for career opportunities you need to have a master's in something! Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

 

[DrSmiles]

You just need to be creative with your resources. Personally I found hospital volunteer work to be very limiting with how much you can be involved. If you are interested in peds, why not call local youth groups, church youth groups that outreach to homeless/battered kids, or organizations that deal with sick/terminally ill kids- cystic fibrosis foundation, muscular dystrophy, Hospice centers, etc. I know here in Kansas City we have a home for battered women/children. They always need volunteers to help out. Look beyond the local hospitals and you should come up with multitudes of ideas for volunteer work, and much of this type of experience can get you in the door with clinical experiences if that is what you are looking for as well.

 

[Dave81]

I too found volunteering at hospitals a little limiting... I volunteered at a cancer clinic where the only thing that they really let me to was play with the kids. I would suggest looking for some opportunities to work with kids outside the hospital. I think the most meaningful volunteering I did was being a camp counselor for children with diabetes, we went through some training (mostly online) and spent about a week taking care of the kids at camp... wasn't as easy as I thought! but was definitely a huge learning experience and something I could talk about during interviews.

 

[ruby_1]

These are some excellent recommendations. I often see undergraduates in our ER but they are usually doing some research work involving surverys or similar work. I often wonder if this is what they imagined when they thought of volunteering. Personally, I don't think these experiences are that rewarding other than exposing someone to the general emergency room environment. And I don't think they add much to an admissions application.

I was on the admissions committee for one of the UC medical schools and we saw many people that put volunteering in a hospital in the appropriate part of their application. Sometimes they would talk about it in their statement and sometimes they wouldn't. The fact that you did volunteer work at a hospital did not add to the application unless there was some remarkable experience that could be conveyed well. However, those that had different volunteering experiences such as working in a homeless shelter, or mobile health care van, or money-strapped community clinic, really stood out. Sometimes the people that volunteer at these places do so because they truly believe in what they are doing. Those are the applicants that often get a closer look.

 

[Willie B]

cryznikki,

You might think about becoming an EMT or Nurses Assistant. The classes that teach you to be one of these aren't very long. After that you can try to get hired on part-time at a children's hospital that is in the area that you live in.