I volunteer at a clinic and all they make me do is check vitals & do office work

[alexfoleyc]

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Should I keep on volunteering? I feel like this won't be helpful when they ask me to write about a meaningful volunteer experience for my secondaries.

 

[IMissMyMoney]

Experiences are what you make of them.

 

[EMS5]

What do you expect them to let you do? You get to take vital signs, which is actually direct patient care if you think about it, you get to interact with the patients, doesn't sound like such a bad deal.

Just remember, if you volunteered at an ER you would be handing out blankets and juice and pushing around wheelchairs. Either way, volunteers are truly at the bottom of the food chain. When it comes down to it, the fact that matters is that you volunteered, not necessarily what you did while you volunteered.

 

[chman]

You should be happy you have a position where you get to check vitals.

P.S, keep in mind you have no qualifications to do anything.

 

[GoodmanBrown]

Should I keep on volunteering? I feel like this won't be helpful when they ask me to write about a meaningful volunteer experience for my secondaries.

Haha! Sucks to be you. At my volunteering spot they let me do open heart surgery on this dude! The surgeon was like, "I'm so busy operating right now!" and I was like, "Man, I'd love to do some surgeries if you're too busy. Or I could deliver a baby or two." And he was like, "Totally go for it!" So, I did and I used that as my PS, and med schools literally begged me to come to their school!

 

[bold text]

If you have no formal medical training, you are a huge liability. There isn't much you can do when it comes to patient care.

 

[swamprat]

Get away from clerical/office works, thats useless but the vital signs deal you got going on is def a +

 

[LizzyM]

Should I keep on volunteering? I feel like this won't be helpful when they ask me to write about a meaningful volunteer experience for my secondaries.

Keep your eyes and ears open. You may be a witness to amazing things that will inspire you and give you some insights into the strength of the human spirit. But you've got to be there, doing your job and acting as a fly on the wall.

 

[chman]

Keep your eyes and ears open. You may be a witness to amazing things that will inspire you and give you some insights into the strength of the human spirit. But you've got to be there, doing your job and acting as a fly on the wall.

To add. You are looking at this the wrong way. Sure, if you write down; "I did office work and took some vitals," that will not take you far. But if you talk about the types of people you met, and why they were at a clinic, then perhaps you can come up with some inspiring stuff.

I volunteer at a hospital and it is the same deal. What I do is really not very important, but the experiences with the people are.

 

[alexfoleyc]

Wow! Thanks a lot guys! I guess I was seriously missing the point. 🙂

 

[Perrotfish]

Keep your eyes and ears open. You may be a witness to amazing things that will inspire you and give you some insights into the strength of the human spirit. But you've got to be there, doing your job and acting as a fly on the wall.

Or you can leave, and get your clinical exposure by shadowing rather than doing someone's b!tch work. You shoudn't need to spend 95% of your time doing what should be a paid temp's job so that you can spend 5% of your time watching docs deliver routine medical care when the docs should be letting you shadow for free. It's part of medical training, they all took advantage of it, and now it's their time to pay it forward (as it will, hopefully, be your turn one day). Also if you want to volunteer to help someone, do it outside the hospital with an organization that actually needs your unskilled labor. Unless you're willing to train to get a CNA or EMT-B a hospital/clinic does not need you to volunteer except to do the scutiest of jobs, and therefore you don't want to volunteer there as a volunteer.

 

[morning]

Or you can leave, and get your clinical exposure by shadowing rather than doing someone's b!tch work. You shoudn't need to spend 95% of your time doing what should be a paid temp's job so that you can spend 5% of your time watching docs deliver routine medical care when the docs should be letting you shadow for free. It's part of medical training, they all took advantage of it, and now it's their time to pay it forward (as it will, hopefully, be your turn one day). Also if you want to volunteer to help someone, do it outside the hospital with an organization that actually needs your unskilled labor. Unless you're willing to train to get a CNA or EMT-B a hospital/clinic does not need you to volunteer except to do the scutiest of jobs, and therefore you don't want to volunteer there as a volunteer.

It's been my understanding that shadowing is not usually seen as clinical experience, and clinical experience is important on your app. Hopefully LizzyM can clarify this.

There's this pervasive feeling on SDN that hospital/clinic volunteering positions should exist to be beneficial to pre-meds, when in reality they exist to be beneficial for the hospital/clinic that supplies them. The hospital doesn't give an eff about medical school aspirations. They want you to provide free labor, and when you sign up to do so, you should either take what they give you without complaining or quit. Without complaining. It's not about what the pre-med wants.

 

[NickNaylor]

It's been my understanding that shadowing is not usually seen as clinical experience, and clinical experience is important on your app. Hopefully LizzyM can clarify this.

There's this pervasive feeling on SDN that hospital/clinic volunteering positions should exist to be beneficial to pre-meds, when in reality they exist to be beneficial for the hospital/clinic that supplies them. The hospital doesn't give an eff about medical school aspirations. They want you to provide free labor, and when you sign up to do so, you should either take what they give you without complaining or quit. Without complaining. It's not about what the pre-med wants.

How is shadowing not clinical experience? That makes no sense. What would it be if not clinical experience?

 

[LizzyM]

As I always say, "have you been close enough to smelled patients?" It can be volunteer, paid or shadowing. Shadowing generally doesn't involve as great a time commitment as the other types of clinical exposure and it doesn't help anyone.... Some schools absolutely want to see shadowing and otehrs don't care how you got to know about the profession and the care of patients as long as you have a clue.

 

[SweetRain]

wow, you're lucky to take vitals. Would you rather change bed sheets in the ER?

 

[NickNaylor]

wow, you're lucky to take vitals. Would you rather change bed sheets in the ER?

This.

OP:

 

[cfx]

Should I keep on volunteering? I feel like this won't be helpful when they ask me to write about a meaningful volunteer experience for my secondaries.

Welcome to clinical volunteering 😀.

I agree with all of the above posters: checking vitals is about the most anyone can expect to do, so it sounds like you lucked out there. If you do it for awhile and you hate it, do something else you can get enthused about and then find another way to get some clinical experience.

 

[ArkansasRanger]

Volunteering is volunteering. You could be serving up slop at a soup kitchen if you wanted.

 

[Kaustikos]

Volunteering is volunteering. You could be serving up slop at a soup kitchen if you wanted.

Just add something (or lie) about how you saved someones life by serving them that bowl of soup because he was literally 0.1 calories away from initiating apoptosis throughout his entire body.

 

[ILikeDrugs]

At my volunteer site, I get to put in catheters. Even though I'm male, I get to do females as well so I get a much more well-rounded experience. Doing this type of work really allows me to connect with my patients. 🙂

 

[apumic]

At my volunteer site, I get to put in catheters. Even though I'm male, I get to do females as well so I get a much more well-rounded experience. Doing this type of work really allows me to connect with my patients. 🙂

 

[NickNaylor]

At my volunteer site, I get to put in catheters. Even though I'm male, I get to do females as well so I get a much more well-rounded experience. Doing this type of work really allows me to connect with my patients. 🙂

There's no way in hell I would be letting a volunteer do that.

 

[Namedmymember]

Haha! Sucks to be you. At my volunteering spot they let me do open heart surgery on this dude! The surgeon was like, "I'm so busy operating right now!" and I was like, "Man, I'd love to do some surgeries if you're too busy. Or I could deliver a baby or two." And he was like, "Totally go for it!" So, I did and I used that as my PS, and med schools literally begged me to come to their school!

Win!

 

[gujuDoc]

You should be happy you have a position where you get to check vitals.

P.S, keep in mind you have no qualifications to do anything.

I was hoping someone would post this!!!!!

Checking vitals is far more exciting then some of the other stuff that people do as volunteers. it gives you some clinical skills and direct patient contact in the actual clinical focus.

 

[gujuDoc]

As I always say, "have you been close enough to smelled patients?" It can be volunteer, paid or shadowing. Shadowing generally doesn't involve as great a time commitment as the other types of clinical exposure and it doesn't help anyone.... Some schools absolutely want to see shadowing and otehrs don't care how you got to know about the profession and the care of patients as long as you have a clue.

Totally off topic but LizzyM I LOVE YOUR NEW AVATAR!!!!!!!!!!!

Its the girl from Glee isn't it??? That's awesomeness right there.

 

[theVster]

Dude, checking vitals while shadowing is about as much as you're allowed to do.

And for the people who said that shadowing is not considered clinical experience--wut? I really hope that's a joke.

 

[jessica07]

Yes! Keep on volunteering. It will look good showing you're dedicated to something. Continue taking vital signs and ask the clinic director if you can shadow one of the physicians. I volunteer at a free clinic and I had to start out doing vital signs and now they've let me move up and do other things.

 

[gettheleadout]

At my volunteer site, I get to put in catheters. Even though I'm male, I get to do females as well so I get a much more well-rounded experience. Doing this type of work really allows me to connect with my patients. 🙂

Tell me you're kidding?

 

[NYRN]

Experiences are what you make of them.

👍

I think if you really keep an open mind, you can make this experience a great one.

Don't underestimate the skill of taking vital signs without using digital machines. Taking manual b/p's are not that easy, especially in a clinic or hospital with a lot of background noise.

Take manual pulses. Get used to what a normal and abnormal pulse is. Is the pulse weak, strong, regular, irregular? If you find anything abnormal, keep that in mind and try to correlate that with the history of the patient. For example does the patient have a history of a-fib? Are they on beta blockers?

If you are checking respirations, observe how different people of different ages and with various conditions are breathing without them noticing that you are checking. This will help you get an idea of what normal vs. abnormal respiration looks like.

I'm sure you probably already know this, but remember that patients love to talk about themselves. Patients may volunteer information about what brought them to the clinic, and may offer information about their past history. Although you probably can't ask them, if they know you are going to medical school they may volunteer this info. Simply getting comfortable talking to patients is half the battle once you are in med school and need to take a history.

Good luck, and before you know it you will be in med school and you will never have to file or do other types of office work again!

 

[blaithnaid]

Good luck, and before you know it you will be in med school and you will never have to file or do other types of office work again!

Until you get to residency. And fellowship. And being an attending.

 

[s1lver]

Yup, that's pretty m uch the standard volunteer work. Almost all premed do this to jump an obstacle in the application process.

 

[NYRN]

Until you get to residency. And fellowship. And being an attending.

I meant like filing and clerical work. I don't know any residents/attendings/fellows who do that.

 

[mmmcdowe]

What do you expect them to let you do? You get to take vital signs, which is actually direct patient care if you think about it, you get to interact with the patients, doesn't sound like such a bad deal.

Just remember, if you volunteered at an ER you would be handing out blankets and juice and pushing around wheelchairs. Either way, volunteers are truly at the bottom of the food chain. When it comes down to it, the fact that matters is that you volunteered, not necessarily what you did while you volunteered.

This is the biggest problem with all pre-med activities. The fact of the matter is that they aren't likely allow you to volunteer as the triage nurse in its entirety or let you run around doing exams and drawing blood. There are people paid to do that that can do it way better at a billionth of the risk. I have this trouble in my lab right now with some of my pre-med assistants. I feel like I disappoint them when I assign them to do things like collecting chart data and stuff, but the fact of the matter is that the bulk of my clinical research is that. In fact, the only contact I have with the patients is when I do enrollment. Other that it's data mining and such.

In summary: I think being trusted to take vitals as a volunteer is pretty sweet. Plus you get tons of patient time that way.

 

[blaithnaid]

I meant like filing and clerical work. I don't know any residents/attendings/fellows who do that.

You mean like filling out order sheets? Or billing vouchers? Or grant apps or...


Some of them even turn over their own OR rooms.

 

[NYRN]

You mean like filling out order sheets? Or billing vouchers? Or grant apps or...


Some of them even turn over their own OR rooms.

Paperwork is aplenty, there is no dispute about that. I'm talking about things such as filing charts, making appointments, handing out paperwork for first time patients, signing in patients. Those are the types of things that volunteers do that MD's are not doing.

 

[blaithnaid]

Paperwork is aplenty, there is no dispute about that. I'm talking about things such as filing charts, making appointments, handing out paperwork for first time patients, signing in patients. Those are the types of things that volunteers do that MD's are not doing.

There are places that let volunteers do that?


And yeah, even the filing part. I can't tell you how many Big Name School kids don't know their alphabets. Here, we'd never let a vollie make an appointment, they cannot be trusted on the systems.

 

[theVster]

This is the biggest problem with all pre-med activities. The fact of the matter is that they aren't likely allow you to volunteer as the triage nurse in its entirety or let you run around doing exams and drawing blood. There are people paid to do that that can do it way better at a billionth of the risk. I have this trouble in my lab right now with some of my pre-med assistants. I feel like I disappoint them when I assign them to do things like collecting chart data and stuff, but the fact of the matter is that the bulk of my clinical research is that. In fact, the only contact I have with the patients is when I do enrollment. Other that it's data mining and such.

In summary: I think being trusted to take vitals as a volunteer is pretty sweet. Plus you get tons of patient time that way.

Yup. It's a good skill, patient contact or not.

 

[idiotqueen92]

When I volunteered the "boss" lady (nobody was a doctor since I got assigned to a hearing and speech clinic) kept asking me to bring coffee for her. In another clinic they asked me if I could pick up donuts from Dunkin' Donuts. I really don't know how to talk about my experiences when I never went near a patient 🙁