Hospital volunteering hours - should I even bother? :S

[nolee]

Is it worth anything to pharm schools to have hospital volunteering hours, or are they only looking for volunteering in a pharmacy environment? There are currently volunteer openings at my local hospital, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I should take one. Thank you so much for any advice! C:

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[The Asklepian]

In my opinion, you should go for it. I volunteered 250+ hours in a hospital, only around 100 of them were in the inpatient pharmacy. Sometimes you just need to get a foot in the door in order to get where you want to be. Secondly, I would argue that it gives you more perspective as to how a large institution like a hospital is run.

 

[pharmarathoner]

Is it worth anything to pharm schools to have hospital volunteering hours, or are they only looking for volunteering in a pharmacy environment? There are currently volunteer openings at my local hospital, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I should take one. Thank you so much for any advice! C:

You should do it. You can only do like 2-5 hours a week and the tasks will be really low-level usually but it's good experience and you get to see what environment the pharmacists work in, and can then talk about that in interviews.

 

[nolee]

Thank you so much for your responses! I really appreciate it. =)

 

[AlPacino]

Volunteer hours in any medical field will be valuable to you. I also volunteer in the hospital and had to wait a couple of weeks before getting into the pharmacy.

 

[BlknOrange]

if you have your technician license and pharmacy tech experience, they may notice that and forward your resume to the department of pharmacy. That happened to me and I got hired in the inpatient pharmacy setting.

 

[jackal head]

I guess it depends on what you do, they had me on the second floor directing people where to go as they came in...boooooooring. To be fair, most volunteer work is total bs. Do you really learn anything? Do you really gain any valuable insight? No, you just do it so you can say you did it.

 

[ChemPharm77]

I say no. Your volunteer experience will have no impact on what you do in P1 year. Focus on your grades and PCAT then if you have time volunteer.