How many volunteer hours?

[Medicine929]

I am a pre-medical student and I was planning on doing around 150-200 voulnteer hours at a emergency room or clinic. I was wondering how many hours is the norm? How many hours to be competitive? How many hours have you done?

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[mvenus929]

It's not quantity that matters, it's quality.

I've done 120 or so hours in the past 6 months at the local hospital. I pick up hours in random volunteer projects when I can, and I spend a great deal of time doing one of my ECs (like... probably at least an hour a day, if not more). Do what you want, do something you'll get something out of (whether it be being able to follow docs around, or just the feel good feeling of helping someone out). Then you'll have plenty to talk about when interviews come along.

 

[Law2Doc]

It's not quantity that matters, it's quality.

Agreed. If you think logging a certain number of hours is going to mean anything to adcoms, you are looking at it the wrong way. The goal is to get good clinical exposure -- to deal with patients, to see the doctor-patient interaction, and hopefully to use the experience to help you decide if you could see yourself doing something like those physicians as your career. There are certainly volunteer experiences that are hundreds or thousands of hours that are bad experiences because you don't really see or do anything. But if you must focus on hours, I would suggest something that involves several hours a week for a very prolonged period of time as being optimal.

 

[PreMed4Dummies]

I've been a volunteer EMT for a year now and was a first responder before that. iIve pretty much taken one duty shift a week for the past few years and have ranged from zero calls to 4-5 calls a night while on duty. I don't, however, have a log of how many hours I've been on calls and its pretty difficult to estimate. Will I need to list exact hours on my AMCAS? I have many stories and things that I've learned to talk about during interviews, I'm just curious about how to report my involvement on the actual application. Thanks.

 

[TheRealMD]

Let's put it this way:

12 hours with a ortho resident will teach you more than 1000+ hours volunteering in the ER. That's why numbers don't matter.

Quality > quantity.

 

[Quix]

Volunteering is fine, but paid hours are better. $$$ = helpful for paying bills and buying unnecessary but entertaining material goods.

I've lost track of my clinical hours - I worked out a rough calculation of about 6700 as of the last application cycle (graduate education and working in a psych hospital), but I think it's closer to 7000+ now.

 

[prmdbeach17]

Let's put it this way:

12 hours with a ortho resident will teach you more than 1000+ hours volunteering in the ER. That's why numbers don't matter.

Quality > quantity.

I second this. I got so much more from spending 10 hours one day in inpatient neurology than I did an entire summer volunteering in the ER. You can only give out so many warm towels Not that I don't like volunteering...

 

[Summer Sweet]

Volunteering is fine, but paid hours are better. $$$ = helpful for paying bills and buying unnecessary but entertaining material goods.

That's my kind of clinical experience. I was thinking about getting CPR certification and doing lifeguard training instead of the boring run-of-the-mill volunteering, but I haven't seriously swum since high school and now I'm sluggish and weak in the water I'll be the one needing a lifeguard now

 

[mvenus929]

Will I need to list exact hours on my AMCAS?

They ask for an hours/week type thing. Just estimate it.