Hospital volunteering hours

[Dwerfy]

Hi everyone,

Graduating senior applying to dental school at the moment. Before I decided to pursue dentistry, I volunteered a lot at the hospital near my University. This amounted to about 200 hours of volunteering in multiple departments. I have a fair amount of dental experience, but I'm not sure if I even want to include this on my app because it is not focused in dentistry. Should I include these hours in my application, or maybe at least some of them? I specifically volunteered in labor and delivery/postpartum unit for service learning for a class. Maybe it's best to just include that?

Let me know what you guys think. Thank you!

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[TheDentalSchoolCoach]

It's completely fine to include it. It's a lot of volunteering hours. A lot of folks are actually in the same boat ( I was too). Including the hospital volunteering number would not be seen as a negative.

 

[biochem5]

Put it down minus the hours that were for a class assignment

 

[ssdent18]

Yes put any and all volunteering hours. Experience is experience

 

[Quinque]

I would count it - good way to phrase it could be exposing you to healthcare settings and talking about how it shaped your ability to connect with and talk to patients.

For example: One of my passions was hospice volunteering, it was not dental related at all, but I was able to express how as a dentist I will be working with patients of all ages. And as a college student living on campus, its easy to become secluded in your age group, so my hospice experience helped expose me to a new demographic of patients (older patients) and helped build my ability to form relationships with them.