I exaggerated my EC's on AMCAS and I got called on it.

[Goro]

---

Members don't see this ad.

But too many come in with the checklist mentality and believe me, at interviews, it shows.

I dont really think that many people actually HATE volunteering for a handful of hours like you are describing.

 

[Lawpy]

I spent 95% of my time doing bitch work, which involved cleaning beds, cleaning other stuff, running errands, making kits, and other pointless things. There was little patient interaction. The patient interaction I had was great, but unfortunately the lack of it didn't help boost this experience.

I hate it when people say "if you don't volunteer, you shouldn't be a doctor." What does providing free labor to a hospital show? Aside from pre-meds, I have never seen other college students devote so much time to rack up volunteer hours. Does that make them bad people?

With so many eager pre-meds looking to volunteer and do virtually anything, it's no surprise that these hospitals take advantage of them and give them bitch work to do. Also, since I was in the suburbs and didnt have too many hospitals to choose from, it wasn't so easy to just pick a new place like everyone says to do.

Hospital volunteering is a miserable waste of time
The point is to learn what doctors do and how the hospital works. You don't get anything out of doing housekeeping. That should be done by paid staff

Shadowing tells you what doctors do.

Clinical volunteering is to show us that you really want to be around all those sick people and that you know what you're getting into.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

I mean, I understand how volunteering in the ER can be a waste of time, but I like to think of hospital volunteering as reducing someone else's burden. Someone has to clean the beds, transfer patients, get supplies etc. A volunteer taking in charge of all those things spare the time for nurses and technicians to focus on other duties. Consider hospital volunteering (or any volunteering in clinical settings) to be an opportunity to improve efficiency in the clinical environment.

Can't think of any argument for shadowing. That is really for you to see what the doctor's job is like, but you can also see that in a volunteering/research/scribing environment.

 

[DokterMom]

Shadowing tells you what doctors do.

Clinical volunteering is to show us that you really want to be around all those sick people and that you know what you're getting into.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.




Seriously, the nicer the suburban hospital is, the more hoops you have to jump through to land a volunteer gig, the less they need your help, and consequently, the less meaningful and valuable your work is.

Go where they need your help.

 

[jaxon]

The level of unrealistic political correctness in this post... The whole point of doing pre-med volunteering is to LEARN something.

Yes, those manual labor tasks and housekeeping tasks are important so that our hospitals are clean. But thats not the kind of stuff pre-med volunteering should really amount to. Patient Contact is key

I don't understand what is unrealistic or PC about what I said lol. I'm not advocating for everyone to go jump on the sword and spend hours on end mopping floors. Of course the point is to learn how hospitals work and have contact with patients, but I'd hate for someone to think that their experience helping out a hospital in any capacity is totally worthless. Patient contact is obviously the ideal, and maybe my optimistic naïveté is showing, but I'd rather just look on the bright side of time spent instead of calling it "bitch work," especially when you are still helping people. Also, I wasn't attacking the guy to be clear, I just felt badly because it seems like he really hated his volunteering experience.

Plus, from what I can tell, learning how to be a hospital grunt IS learning something useful

 

[Gandyy]

I don't understand what is unrealistic or PC about what I said lol. I'm not advocating for everyone to go jump on the sword and spend hours on end mopping floors. Of course the point is to learn how hospitals work and have contact with patients, but I'd hate for someone to think that their experience helping out a hospital in any capacity is totally worthless. Patient contact is obviously the ideal, and maybe my optimistic naïveté is showing, but I'd rather just look on the bright side of time spent instead of calling it "bitch work," especially when you are still helping people. Also, I wasn't attacking the guy to be clear, I just felt badly because it seems like he really hated his volunteering experience.

Plus, from what I can tell, learning how to be a hospital grunt IS learning something useful

I cant read your mind. I can only respond to what you post. You are correct about your "Optimistic naivete" in that last post though.

 

[jaxon]

I cant read your mind. I can only respond to what you post. You are correct about your "Optimistic naivete" in that last post though.

ok

 

[blackroses]

I don't think you need to volunteer at a hospital, but you do need to dedicate time to something worthwhile without compensation. It shows that there's something you care about, and that you are willing to put in work.

If only this actually worked, the only thing I would need to list on my application would be the tens of thousands of hours I've spent training for and participating in my sport of choice. I assure you that I do not get compensation for it - quite the opposite, I hemorrhage money to be able to participate in it.

Sadly for me, it's a little more complex than you make it seem.

 

[el_duderino]

If only this actually worked, the only thing I would need to list on my application would be the tens of thousands of hours I've spent training for and participating in my sport of choice. I assure you that I do not get compensation for it - quite the opposite, I hemorrhage money to be able to participate in it.

Sadly for me, it's a little more complex than you make it seem.

That is valuable as an EC. Very much so. But I should have said something *other than yourself*.

 

[7331poas]

Seriously, the nicer the suburban hospital is, the more hoops you have to jump through to land a volunteer gig, the less they need your help, and consequently, the less meaningful and valuable your work is.

Go where they need your help.

Not sure I actually believe this.

I volunteer at a large academic hospital (whose name would be recognizable) and all I do is go around talking to patients.

Just research before you pick a place to volunteer at.

Hospital volunteering is a miserable waste of time
The point is to learn what doctors do and how the hospital works. You don't get anything out of doing housekeeping. That should be done by paid staff

Even if it is, literally hundreds of millions of people are miserable at their jobs and dont feel the need to continuously bitch about it on the internet repeatedly over the course of years.

Just saying, its getting old.

 

[SteveRope123]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

 

[RaspberrySlushy]

I think it's just the nature of volunteering, medical or otherwise. You end up doing the little things that need to be done to help out. My first volunteering gig out of school was basically stuffing envelopes in an office. Not at all what I had in mind and not glamorous but not worthless either.

Sometimes it's just part of being on a team. You stuff the envelopes or change the sheets so other people with more expertise have easier times getting their work done. I think there can be a component to the idea of volunteering of feeling like this star, this selfless star making a difference. The reality is usually what's needed is more mundane. But still helpful.

A few years ago I did a semester in India and my group volunteered at an orphanage which can give you the idea of being this altruistic person helping the poor orphans. The reality is what we did every day was laundry, by hand, on the roof of the orphanage. It wasn't glamorous or ego boosting but it helped the operations of the place, made things run smoother, etc.

All I'm saying is just b/c something seems like grunt work doesn't mean it's not helpful. Being a little part of a big picture still matters.

 

[Psai]

Not sure I actually believe this.

I volunteer at a large academic hospital (whose name would be recognizable) and all I do is go around talking to patients.

Just research before you pick a place to volunteer at.



Even if it is, literally hundreds of millions of people are miserable at their jobs and dont feel the need to continuously bitch about it on the internet repeatedly over the course of years.

Just saying, its getting old.

It's not a job, you aren't getting paid

 

[LizzyM]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

You need to shadow more. And lose the attitude. One of the most endearing things any doctor ever did for me was bring me a drink of water at 5 a.m. in the delivery room when the nurse was busy with my baby and there was no one else around to help. If you are too good to be concerned for a patient's comfort, then you don't deserve a seat in medical school no matter how good your grades and scores are.

 

[el_duderino]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

I'm perfectly happy being my patient's dog, if that's what they need to get better. Your attitude here is juvenile and entitled. Sounds like your "passion" is having people call you doctor, not actually caring for patients.

 

[MerciMerci]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

Yes, bringing water to make somebody feel better is obviously demeaning. I am sure with this compassionate mindset you will nail your interviews!

This is literally one of the most cringe posts I have seen.

 

[Marine to MD]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

I hope this is a troll post but I am fairly certain that it isn't. The level of entitlement and general ignorance here is just unbelievable. Several other posters seem to be in the same boat. If you are approaching volunteering as it being something that YOU are supposed to get something out of...you're doing it wrong! Volunteering is not to benefit you!

"If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink" - This line made my skin crawl. I hope this line of thinking shines through on your application. It will guarantee me that I'll never have to worry about having you as a colleague.

 

[DancingDoggie]

You need to shadow more. And lose the attitude. One of the most endearing things any doctor ever did for me was bring me a drink of water at 5 a.m. in the delivery room when the nurse was busy with my baby and there was no one else around to help. If you are too good to be concerned for a patient's comfort, then you don't deserve a seat in medical school no matter how good your grades and scores are.

I agree. I've seen multiple residents and attendings ask patients if they needed anything. When the patients wanted something to eat or drink, more often than not the residents/attendings went to fetch the items themselves instead of delegating the task to students/nurses.

 

[Terry Toma]

I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for.

In addition to everything that has already been mentioned...you aren't a physician. Med students are the lowest people on the medical totem pole. We (you) are below them (i.e. not even on the totem pole).

If you were interested in finance instead of medicine, would you show up on day one of your first part time undergrad job and declare tasks to be beneath you because "I want to be a CFO, and CFOs don't churn out amortization schedules." If you feel the need to consider yourself above certain tasks (and I'm not saying that you should feel this way), maybe get a little farther along in the process first. Right now, you're just a kid who thinks he's too good to pour water because you might be a doctor someday.

 

[candbgirl]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

Wow just wow. This post is just awful!

 

[candbgirl]

I agree. I've seen multiple residents and attendings ask patients if they needed anything. When the patients wanted something to eat or drink, more often than not the residents/attendings went to fetch the items themselves instead of delegating the task to students/nurses.

This is so true. And as a patient who has had this happen very much appreciated!

 

[Gandyy]

I'm perfectly happy being my patient's dog, if that's what they need to get better. Your attitude here is juvenile and entitled. Sounds like your "passion" is having people call you doctor, not actually caring for patients.

Yea I agree. I mean if its going to improve their health, psychological or emotional, then its always a plus.

On the other hand, there are many hospital volunteering tasks that do not do this and are horrendously boring/menial.

 

[ImmunoLove]

My volunteer work was nearly all related to helping the poor and homeless. I organized a fund raiser for a food bank and volunteered hundreds of hours there. I may have neglected to mention that most of the hours were part of required community service for the nearly constant trouble that my hell raising fraternity got into, but that's water under the bridge now. I did some limited ED volunteering as well to check that box and get some "clinical" time.
I'll say one thing for the food bank, they were all good people there and the disadvantaged recipients were also very appreciative, which was pretty much exactly the opposite of my ED time, though I met a couple billionaires there which was interesting. Often one thing the food banks, etc. need is real leadership and organization skills. A lot of the regulars there have huge hearts, but need direction. That's a place where a motivated and committed college student can really help, and gain useful and productive EC time. Instead of finding ways to hide in forgotten storage rooms to study or trick the system into giving you extra hours when you were really in the Bahamas or out playing drinking games, man up and do something meaningful and useful in your own community. Now I have trouble giving these places time, it's too limited and valuable, so I give them money instead, but I still do Guest Chef night at one place.

That is awesome

 

[ImmunoLove]

Yea I agree. I mean if its going to improve their health, psychological or emotional, then its always a plus.

On the other hand, there are many hospital volunteering tasks that do not do this and are horrendously boring/menial.

The spirit in which is done is what makes it one or the other. When you literally quench the thirst of another, who is sick and suffering and cannot get up to help themselves, be grateful and carry the honor with some humility and respect.

My assessment is more pre-meds (or people in general) just need to get their arse kicked by life to appreciate both opportunity and loss.

*my comment is not directed at you per se, but at those who might share the "it's boring" mindset"

 

[IlDestriero]

I agree. I've seen multiple residents and attendings ask patients if they needed anything. When the patients wanted something to eat or drink, more often than not the residents/attendings went to fetch the items themselves instead of delegating the task to students/nurses.

Every day some kid tells me that they're hungry or thirsty, several kids usually. I always ignore their request, and don't pass it on to the nurse either. I guess I'm a bad person and shouldn't be a physician.

 

[ImmunoLove]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

Holy mother of God (and I'm an Atheist).

Firstly, hate to break it to you, but medicine is more an art than science, and by that I mean that white coat really should be blue. Yeah if you're in an academic setting (or if you of your own volition choose to engage in lifelong learning, which in a sense you must, but the degree of this varies), it is extremely intellectually stimulating. But not always, in fact often not at all. Many docs treat the same diseases day in and day out. They don't need to learn a whole hell of a lot to maintain their knowledge base, and do not have particularly intellectually stimulating careers (again, don't start saying medicine is lifelong learning and therefore always stimulating-- My argument is that the doc often chooses the extent to which it is stimulating (the limiting bar is relatively low).

Not to mention, half the time no one knows what the hell is going on, and so you treat the patient, not the disease. Quite literally, you "care for the patient by caring for the patient". So again, you in that blue coat better damn well care and want to be a patient's dog and your superior's bitch. Why? Because it's not about pandering to your ego, you arse. It's about being there for another person (the patient), to serve that patient, which you strive to do to such an extent that you are not only their bitch, but your teacher's bitch, so that you can improve.

It's not right being this annoyed before coffee. If you were on my team I would seriously consider slapping your smug mug. I wouldn't. But I'd want to.

 

[Gandyy]

The spirit in which is done is what makes it one or the other. When you literally quench the thirst of another, who is sick and suffering and cannot get up to help themselves, be grateful and carry the honor with some humility and respect.

My assessment is more pre-meds (or people in general) just need to get their arse kicked by life to appreciate both opportunity and loss.

*my comment is not directed at you per se, but at those who might share the "it's boring" mindset"

Ok, but what I'm saying is doing secretary work when you signed up for patient contact is bull****.

 

[ImmunoLove]

Every day some kid tells me that they're hungry or thirsty, several kids usually. I always ignore their request, and don't pass it on to the nurse either. I guess I'm a bad person and shouldn't be a physician.

You too? Yeah, those starving kids are the worst. Ugh. Clearly we are meant to be.

🙂

(in case it's not clear to the interwebz, my interlocutor and I are both being sarcastic)

 

[Gandyy]

Every day some kid tells me that they're hungry or thirsty, several kids usually. I always ignore their request, and don't pass it on to the nurse either. I guess I'm a bad person and shouldn't be a physician.

To illustrate how superficial some SDN posters are, now that YOU said this and are an attending physician, those same people will not batter you as much as if someone else had posted the exact same thing.

 

[ImmunoLove]

Ok, but what I'm saying is doing secretary work when you signed up for patient contact is bull****.

Yeah some gigs suck. Get out of those and do something that suits you. Then, doing the bitchwork isn't so bad, and you come to enjoy it. Is it always perfect, no. But I'd agree some places are better than others, find better places, realize both will entail some bitchwork, and rock on.

 

[ImmunoLove]

To illustrate how superficial some SDN posters are, now that YOU said this and are an attending physician, those same people will not batter you as much as if someone else had posted the exact same thing.

Well I'll speak for myself: I'd ream him/her whether or not s/he was an attending physician, but here this was a joke, and I wouldn't ream a student or a physician for saying this.

 

[el_duderino]

To illustrate how superficial some SDN posters are, now that YOU said this and are an attending physician, those same people will not batter you as much as if someone else had posted the exact same thing.

His post is too ambiguous.

 

[Goro]

Go look up the definition of altruism.

Performing an act of kindness is demeaning?

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing infsomething as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Not all of this activity needs to be done in a hospital.
Seriously, the nicer the suburban hospital is, the more hoops you have to jump through to land a volunteer gig, the less they need your help, and consequently, the less meaningful and valuable your work is.

Go where they need your help.

This can't be overstated. I got sick of begging the nice hospitals in my city to let me volunteer, and I finally realized what I needed to do was find the old state run hospital on the outskirts. I got started almost right away, can pretty much do whatever I want (within reason obviously), and feel like they genuinely appreciate me showing up. It was both easier to get going and is a far superior experience to what I would have gotten at one of the big centers.

 

[IlDestriero]

Well I'll speak for myself: I'd ream him/her whether or not s/he was an attending physician, but here this was a joke, and I wouldn't ream a student or a physician for saying this.

It wasn't a joke. They tell me every day.
Every single day. And I don't do anything about it, other than say you can get some juice later.
I'd like to help them, but I really can't.

 

[ImmunoLove]

It wasn't a joke. They tell me every day.
Every single day. And I don't do anything about it, other than say you can get some juice later.

Well hopefully you're in anesthesia or some other field where it makes sense...

 

[IlDestriero]

Well hopefully you're in anesthesia or some other field where it makes sense...

At least you're paying attention.

 

[ImmunoLove]

At least you're paying attention.

I do enough idiotic things; I don't need to add "jumping to conclusions" to that list...

[I appreciate the bait, that was fun. Still not gonna fall for it 😉. You're a consummate teacher! And no, I'm not being sarcastic or blowing smoke. That particular one might work better on a newbie though. I've made enough miss-steps in life to start getting my act together. Plus "ether man" is kind of a giveaway...]

 

[Planes2Doc]

How is it that it seems like every-time I see you posting, its bitching about ECs and how miserable you are.

We get it.

Oh, I'm not miserable. I'm enjoying what I'm doing so far as a medical student. The second hospital I rotated at had the most elderly volunteers that I have ever seen (with a few pre-meds here and there). On my very first day with the medical education director, we stepped into her office and she just screamed out: "$h1t! Where's my volunteer?! She has all of the paperwork." I have never seen so many volunteers handling administrative positions before. Now, this is a non-profit hospital, and not a charity. So I'm guessing that the money the hospital saves by employing so many administrative volunteers isn't thrown at patients. Patients still need to pay their bills and what not. It sounds like they were doing the board of directors a big favor. And the following is a great point...

Hospital volunteering is a miserable waste of time
The point is to learn what doctors do and how the hospital works. You don't get anything out of doing housekeeping. That should be done by paid staff

So very true. I'd feel less bad about volunteering if it is either exclusively: Patient care and no housekeeping, or housekeeping is okay at a charity or organization that provides exclusively free care without having a metaphorical gun to their head (ie uninsured patients in the ED). If the techs feel like they are overwhelmed, the hospital should hire more per shift. Every time I was bossed around by them (and they would give me multiple rooms to clean at the same time), they spent that time just messing around talking with each other, logging onto Facebook, playing with phones, etc... They are getting paid to do their work and should do it. Don't make us volunteers provide free labor when it won't even benefit the "right people." We're not here to pad the wallets of rich board of directors and hospital administrators.

At least as a medical student I can spend some time with patients when I'm not typing notes or rounding with the group. It's been far more and far better than the volunteering I had. Whatever happens forward happens. If there's bitch work during intern year, then that's fine, because I'm already on track to becoming a doctor, and not having to put on a huge facade as a pre-med.

I hope this is a troll post but I am fairly certain that it isn't. The level of entitlement and general ignorance here is just unbelievable. Several other posters seem to be in the same boat. If you are approaching volunteering as it being something that YOU are supposed to get something out of...you're doing it wrong! Volunteering is not to benefit you!

"If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink" - This line made my skin crawl. I hope this line of thinking shines through on your application. It will guarantee me that I'll never have to worry about having you as a colleague.

Indeed. Volunteering is meant to benefit the PATIENTS. Spending time with patients and bringing them a smile to their face is the whole point of not only being a "volunteer," but also for becoming a doctor! The point of volunteering isn't to benefit the staff so they can spend their time not doing any actual work which they are PAID to do, or not to benefit the board of directors or hospital administration so they can make even more money (hence all of the elderly administrative volunteers).

 

[LizzyM]

Well hopefully you're in anesthesia or some other field where it makes sense...

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

 

[ImmunoLove]

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

Hey, pointing out the obvious is a special gift of mine... 🙂

 

[PooshBag]

I wonder what OP is doing right now...

 

[LizzyM]

I wonder what OP is doing right now...

Penance?

 

[Promethean]

Yea I agree. I mean if its going to improve their health, psychological or emotional, then its always a plus.

On the other hand, there are many hospital volunteering tasks that do not do this and are horrendously boring/menial.

Not replying to disagree with you, just to point out that boring and menial don't mean unimportant or unnecessary.

A good chunk of my volunteering hours involved taking medical supplies out of large boxes and apportioning them into smaller bags to be distributed to people in need of sterile injection supplies. It doesn't get much more boring/menial. But I turned up week after week to do it because they truly needed volunteer help (no budget for paid staff). And because there was (is) a blood borne pathogen epidemic raging, and every person who could avoid exposure was one less person to help the disease spread even further.

I wasn't even pre-med then. I was volunteering because I wanted to be doing something to give back to my community. It might be nice to WANT to be the guy in the white coat treating the patients once they were infected with the incurable, fatal illnesses, but at that point in my life, I wasn't qualified to do anything more important than grunt-work in the name of prevention. Certainly the menial and boring work I did could have been performed by a trained monkey... but if we were waiting around for trained monkeys or dollars from heaven to pay minimum wage employees to do it, then it wouldn't have gotten done. And a few more injection drug users would have used dirty needles and become infected with HIV or Hep C.

(Before anyone spouts off that they brought it on themselves, I remind you that infectious disease doesn't check your karma before it sets up shop. A person who gets infected through poor decision making can then go on to infect others who didn't do anything "wrong." Even if you want to write off a segment of the population as not worth helping, when it comes to public health and infectious disease - we are all in the same boat. You can't let just half of it sink.)

 

[Planes2Doc]

None of the things you listed here is "bitch work." It might be manual labor, simple housekeeping, etc., but you're helping out a facility that saves lives and heals people. No matter how insignificant or annoying it might seem to you, what you did was still important.

Check out this commercial:



Okay, so what does a Domino's ad, specifically this one, have to do with saving lives? Well as you said, helping out doing manual labor at a hospital that saves lives and heals people is important. But what about this Domino's store? It got completely slammed by customers who needed their pizzas. Now, would you be willing to volunteer here to help the INCREDIBLY overworked staff? Yes? No? I'm guessing you're going to say no, because it's a for-profit company. But let's go ahead and stretch this. People need food to survive, and Domino's provides food! Therefore, without food, people would die. So ultimately, Domino's is sustaining life.

Yes, what I said above was stretching things to the limits, but that's what I feel pre-meds are doing with hospital volunteering. A lot of times, you will be at a non-profit, less commonly at a for-profit, and rarely at a charity hospital. Now the latter really relies on volunteers to make things work, so that's great and you should be proud of working there. But the non-profit is where it really gets to me. Right now, I've spent the last three months at a non-profit hospital in Chicago that is adequately staffed. The nurses and techs do what they are supposed to, they take appropriate breaks when necessary, and everyone is happy. I have been more than happy to go out of my way to bring patients water, blankets, call family members, and do other similar things just to make them feel better (and these are the things that were GOOD but few and far between with pre-med volunteering). If the nurses and techs were slammed, I wouldn't mind lending a hand. I have never been asked to do any such tasks, nor have I seen them asking interns, because once again, the hospital is adequately staffed. That's why I believe that a non-profit hospital, where the boards of directors are making lots of $$$ (and not shareholders like a for-profit hospital) should hire adequate staff, so that volunteers aren't treated like slave labor. If nurses and techs feel overwhelmed, then hire more staff! It's that simple. I'm sorry if it takes away from one of the board members ability to buy a new Porsche this year, but I can assure you I will still sleep well at night. It's not a volunteer's job, to ensure that techs and nurses can avoid doing the work they are PAID to do. This is the big problem that I see with volunteering in a non-charity hospital, and don't understand why others don't see this.

I believe humility is a very important thing. It's important to be humble, and not treat yourself as being superior than others. Nothing makes me more upset than people who judge others based on their net worth. But at the same time, I don't really understand why it's important to do these jobs either. If a college student is looking to become an investment banker or work in finance, they find an internship (which of course might include bitch work), but they don't spend the summer between junior and senior year working as a janitor at a bulge bracket bank. Same with a pre-law student, they aren't going to work as a janitor. Now I'm not saying that the janitor's or other peoples' jobs aren't important, because they are. But this isn't the type of work that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are going to do. So why do them? What does it prove? Humility is something that people should have, without having to do a job to learn it. Very few college students are going to get down and dirty with certain types of work, but that doesn't mean they will grow up to be bad people who harshly judge others and think they are above them. There are people that aspire to do very many different jobs. I know all of you in this forum aspire to be doctors. But you know what, there are people who set their goals on being a medical assistant or nursing assistant. And that's fine. Everyone has their own jobs to do, and they are at different levels.

Now, there's a janitor at the hospital who I see almost every day. He does a fantastic job polishing the floors, cleaning everywhere, and he often sings too! 🙂 I always say hello and see how he's doing I have nothing but respect for him, and think he's a very nice person. We should all treat others with respect. Follow the golden rule. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated. But we should also understand that there are certain things that people will and will not do. Many doctors didn't start working as janitors, techs, or other positions, and that's okay. I don't see doctors polishing the floors. I also don't see doctors cleaning the rooms or cleaning off a patient's poop. And you know what, that's okay too.

 

[LizzyM]

That's why I believe that a non-profit hospital, where the boards of directors are making lots of $$$ (and not shareholders like a for-profit hospital) should hire adequate staff, so that volunteers aren't treated like slave labor.

The Board of Directors (or Board of Trustees) does not make a lot of money serving on the board of a not-for-profit. If anything, they are expected to be donors to the organization. Most are corporate big wigs in finance, law, public utilities, business, etc.

Now the CEO and CFO of any non-profit of any size is going to be making bank because that is what you need to pay the leader of a multi-million dollar corporation whether it is for-profit or non-profit. Just because it has some employees making bank doesn't mean that the CSO or the Lyric Opera don't need volunteers just as Lurie Children's and NMH do. And if elderly and physically disabled people want to stay active and engaged, why not encourage them to help with tasks they are capable of doing? Years ago, I worked in a clinical area that had a volunteer with MS who was a lawyer. She could no longer work and could only work for 2 hours per day before fatigue set in and she couldn't work at all when the weather was unfavoarable but she made live easier for the staff but in no way gave them 2 hours to sit on their butts. (She made copies and put together new charts. No lawyering.)

 

[Ismet]

Not everyone has the same interests. If you can enjoy doing something as demeaning as bringing people water to drink, then feel free to be 'active' in your hospital volunteering. I for one couldn't stand it and for obvious reasons. My passions aren't in bringing people water, it's in treating people. I do not want to help you quench your thirst, like a servant, so you can smile. I want to be the guy in the white coat treating you for what you came for. It is for this reason that I always loved shadowing physicians and absolutely hated the hospital volunteering. Clinical volunteering was much better. Much more hands on and much more meaningful.

I don't judge any premeds doing it just for hours. It's not an assessment of someone's interests in medicine. It's an assessment of your willingness to be a patients dog. I'd like to see physicians rushing to get their patients water. They won't and that's because it's not their job or passion to so why should admissions expect that from me.

I hope you grow up and lose the entitlement before you pursue medicine, or else you're in for a rude awakening. You have no idea what medicine is. I have certainly seen physicians get water for patients, I have gotten water and other supplies for patients, and if you're somehow so busy that you can't spare 30 seconds to get them something, you let the nurse know first thing. Medicine is an altruistic field. You're getting paid for treating the disease, but truly great physicians, the ones who patients love and refer their friends and family to and who actually care about their patients are the ones who have excellent bedside manner and go above and beyond being the brain in the white coat giving them an antibiotic.

The very very very few people I know of with this mentality fail miserably in clinical years. Have fun with that.

 

[Planes2Doc]

The Board of Directors (or Board of Trustees) does not make a lot of money serving on the board of a not-for-profit. If anything, they are expected to be donors to the organization. Most are corporate big wigs in finance, law, public utilities, business, etc.

Now the CEO and CFO of any non-profit of any size is going to be making bank because that is what you need to pay the leader of a multi-million dollar corporation whether it is for-profit or non-profit. Just because it has some employees making bank doesn't mean that the CSO or the Lyric Opera don't need volunteers just as Lurie Children's and NMH do. And if elderly and physically disabled people want to stay active and engaged, why not encourage them to help with tasks they are capable of doing? Years ago, I worked in a clinical area that had a volunteer with MS who was a lawyer. She could no longer work and could only work for 2 hours per day before fatigue set in and she couldn't work at all when the weather was unfavoarable but she made live easier for the staff but in no way gave them 2 hours to sit on their butts. (She made copies and put together new charts. No lawyering.)

Fair enough, that's a good point. Unfortunately from my personal experience, the techs were sitting on their butts while I was performing their duties. That was just my specific hospital, and I'm guessing some might be like that, and some others may not.

 

[Mad Jack]

How has this thread reached 7 pages?!
😵

How has this thread reached 10 pages?

 

[ImmunoLove]

Not replying to disagree with you, just to point out that boring and menial don't mean unimportant or unnecessary.

A good chunk of my volunteering hours involved taking medical supplies out of large boxes and apportioning them into smaller bags to be distributed to people in need of sterile injection supplies. It doesn't get much more boring/menial. But I turned up week after week to do it because they truly needed volunteer help (no budget for paid staff). And because there was (is) a blood borne pathogen epidemic raging, and every person who could avoid exposure was one less person to help the disease spread even further.

I wasn't even pre-med then. I was volunteering because I wanted to be doing something to give back to my community. It might be nice to WANT to be the guy in the white coat treating the patients once they were infected with the incurable, fatal illnesses, but at that point in my life, I wasn't qualified to do anything more important than grunt-work in the name of prevention. Certainly the menial and boring work I did could have been performed by a trained monkey... but if we were waiting around for trained monkeys or dollars from heaven to pay minimum wage employees to do it, then it wouldn't have gotten done. And a few more injection drug users would have used dirty needles and become infected with HIV or Hep C.

(Before anyone spouts off that they brought it on themselves, I remind you that infectious disease doesn't check your karma before it sets up shop. A person who gets infected through poor decision making can then go on to infect others who didn't do anything "wrong." Even if you want to write off a segment of the population as not worth helping, when it comes to public health and infectious disease - we are all in the same boat. You can't let just half of it sink.)

Likewise, I get through the mind-numbing tasks by reminding myself of the bigger picture (the this helps others) and it becomes not just bearable, but also a "humility check point" (for me, anyway. I mean, life is good if all I'm doing is complaining about menial tasks).

 

[ImmunoLove]

Check out this commercial:



Okay, so what does a Domino's ad, specifically this one, have to do with saving lives? Well as you said, helping out doing manual labor at a hospital that saves lives and heals people is important. But what about this Domino's store? It got completely slammed by customers who needed their pizzas. Now, would you be willing to volunteer here to help the INCREDIBLY overworked staff? Yes? No? I'm guessing you're going to say no, because it's a for-profit company. But let's go ahead and stretch this. People need food to survive, and Domino's provides food! Therefore, without food, people would die. So ultimately, Domino's is sustaining life.

Yes, what I said above was stretching things to the limits, but that's what I feel pre-meds are doing with hospital volunteering. A lot of times, you will be at a non-profit, less commonly at a for-profit, and rarely at a charity hospital. Now the latter really relies on volunteers to make things work, so that's great and you should be proud of working there. But the non-profit is where it really gets to me. Right now, I've spent the last three months at a non-profit hospital in Chicago that is adequately staffed. The nurses and techs do what they are supposed to, they take appropriate breaks when necessary, and everyone is happy. I have been more than happy to go out of my way to bring patients water, blankets, call family members, and do other similar things just to make them feel better (and these are the things that were GOOD but few and far between with pre-med volunteering). If the nurses and techs were slammed, I wouldn't mind lending a hand. I have never been asked to do any such tasks, nor have I seen them asking interns, because once again, the hospital is adequately staffed. That's why I believe that a non-profit hospital, where the boards of directors are making lots of $$$ (and not shareholders like a for-profit hospital) should hire adequate staff, so that volunteers aren't treated like slave labor. If nurses and techs feel overwhelmed, then hire more staff! It's that simple. I'm sorry if it takes away from one of the board members ability to buy a new Porsche this year, but I can assure you I will still sleep well at night. It's not a volunteer's job, to ensure that techs and nurses can avoid doing the work they are PAID to do. This is the big problem that I see with volunteering in a non-charity hospital, and don't understand why others don't see this.

I believe humility is a very important thing. It's important to be humble, and not treat yourself as being superior than others. Nothing makes me more upset than people who judge others based on their net worth. But at the same time, I don't really understand why it's important to do these jobs either. If a college student is looking to become an investment banker or work in finance, they find an internship (which of course might include bitch work), but they don't spend the summer between junior and senior year working as a janitor at a bulge bracket bank. Same with a pre-law student, they aren't going to work as a janitor. Now I'm not saying that the janitor's or other peoples' jobs aren't important, because they are. But this isn't the type of work that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are going to do. So why do them? What does it prove? Humility is something that people should have, without having to do a job to learn it. Very few college students are going to get down and dirty with certain types of work, but that doesn't mean they will grow up to be bad people who harshly judge others and think they are above them. There are people that aspire to do very many different jobs. I know all of you in this forum aspire to be doctors. But you know what, there are people who set their goals on being a medical assistant or nursing assistant. And that's fine. Everyone has their own jobs to do, and they are at different levels.

Now, there's a janitor at the hospital who I see almost every day. He does a fantastic job polishing the floors, cleaning everywhere, and he often sings too! 🙂 I always say hello and see how he's doing I have nothing but respect for him, and think he's a very nice person. We should all treat others with respect. Follow the golden rule. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated. But we should also understand that there are certain things that people will and will not do. Many doctors didn't start working as janitors, techs, or other positions, and that's okay. I don't see doctors polishing the floors. I also don't see doctors cleaning the rooms or cleaning off a patient's poop. And you know what, that's okay too.

Carmen (our cleaning lady at the hospital) is, in a way, one of my closest friends. I have tremendous respect for her, and she for me I think. She's the one who saw me almost lose my mind studying for MCATs, going through divorce, working, doing research, volunteering, trying to survive. She did the late shift and she was the one who really saw how hard I worked. And she was the first person I was excited to tell my MCAT score to because she was "there with me". Sad, she used to say "your kind (the ones wearing the white coat) don't really talk to me--they just ignore me while I clean out the offices". That lady is amazing and I can honestly say I love her like family. You reminded me of her with this, thank you. Fond memories of good people. 🙂