Medical How Are Medical Missions Viewed By Adcoms?

[Question]

How do medical schools view Medical Missions.

— Experts please respond to this post —

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[gyngyn]

Missions that are primarily religious in nature divide along religious lines.
Pre-meds doing things that they would not be allowed to do in the US is frowned upon.
People from the US teaching things that they are qualified to teach in the US to folks in other countries is fine.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Yeah it depends on the experience

 

[GoSpursGo]

This is a premed trip and the way that it is being presented is that we will be providing medical assistance.

Again, it depends on exactly the activities that you do, how it fits into your overall portfolio (ie it can’t be the lions share of your clinical experience), and how it affects you

Likely it will not hurt so if it’s something you want to do by all means do so. But don’t expect that it is going to single handedly elevate your app

 

[Mr.Smile12]

How would medical missions be ranked compared to doing research or medical assistant or other kinds of work?

We see applicants with hundreds or thousands of hours working a an MA or scribe or research over years. Infer the answer from this observation.

 

[GoSpursGo]

As @Mr.Smile12 alluded to, even if you go and accrue “200 hours” over the course of a few weeks, that is not going to be seen as favorably as someone who gets a similar number of hours over the course of a year. Frankly it doesn’t matter what you put for your number of hours, there is going to be an assumption (true or not) that you spent a decent amount of those hours exploring the country you’re visiting and not necessarily delivering impactful care.

Bottom line, it’s fine. Do it if you would enjoy it. But unless you are going to craft a very specific message around how you want to practice global medicine (which you can’t do from a single international trip), this is not some crown jewel experience that will open doors to you. You should plan to get the same other experiences, including US based clinical experience, nonclinical volunteering, and (if it’s your thing) research. Any hours you get from this should be seen as a “bonus.”

 

[Goro]

We look at themvas medical tourism

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Do it if you want to do it. It may help or give you a good talking point in interviews but not gonna take the place of medical experience here in US.

 

[AlteredScale]

At most it'll be a good experience with variable reception form adcoms. Its very hard to make this a "commitment" and probably won't be seen as strongly as someone with long term experience in research or volunteering services.