How to break up hospital volunteering in activities section? Do some of my tasks count as nonclinical?

[14_karat]

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So I have ~200 hours of hospital volunteering in a pediatric hospital. Every semester I was in a different "unit". I would say about ~150 of my total hours were clinical as they involved direct patient interaction and/or observing physician-patient interaction.

The other ~50 hours were primarily in a unit where I looked after the siblings of patients - i.e. helping providing a safe, supportive space for them to unwind, away from the noise and negative feelings that a clinical setting may bring (due to things like: sibling patient not doing too well, family of the patient is stressed, parents are juggling work, being at the patient's side and looking after their other children, etc). Is this nonclinical since I was not interacting with patients at all?

 

[LizzyM]

Most applicants would just bundle that all in one and go for the longevity angle of their clinical volunteering despite the fact that a small portion of the time was spent in activities that did not involve patients (not much different than making coffee and tidying the ICU waiting room while otherwise volunteering in the ICU.

 

[14_karat]

Most applicants would just bundle that all in one and go for the longevity angle of their clinical volunteering despite the fact that a small portion of the time was spent in activities that did not involve patients (not much different than making coffee and tidying the ICU waiting room while otherwise volunteering in the ICU.

My clinical volunteering is still over a 3-year period (stopped due to COVID), so I'm not really worried about boosting my hours. I guess I'm a bit worried about misclassifying anything since the hospital can provide a list of my hours on the different units that the schools can follow-up on. And I do think it was also a meaningful experience of me, seeing how the rest of the family needs to be reassured and given support during a medical crisis.

So if I was to put it under clinical, would I be able to expand on this unit too (since the hospital gig will be an MME)? Or does me revealing that it was the siblings of the patients I was interacting with hurt my credibility in listing everything as "clinical"?

 

[LizzyM]

I am completely confused by that explanation. No one said anything about boosting hours... just that you can say
Bigtown General Hospital 7/1/17-3/21/20 "Volunteer, Clinical"
Call it one of the most meaningful and describe why.
No one really cares how many hours you were in each unit unless the units were the gift shop and the loading dock.

If you want to break out the interaction with the siblings and call it non-clinical, do that but if you are otherwise short of non-clinical it will look like you are splitting hairs by calling volunteering in a hospital with kids who have a very sick sibling "non-clinical".