importance of MEDICAL volunteering/work

[eflwon]

im applying this year, hopefully soon, and am wondering if it is absolutely necessary to have experience in the medical field. I volunteered minimaly, 80hrs at two diff places. one was in guatemala but it still was limited. im not volunteering at all now because i work in a underfunded grouphome that takes up all my time. im pretty active at my work but its not medically related at all. i am going to shadow a DO but that will probably be minimal as well. what do you guys think?

thanks

just for backround purposes: gpa ~3.5 both, and mcat 29P

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[Captain Fantastic]

It is what it is. Don't make excuses for why you don't have more hours. Discuss what you learned from your experiences and how that has affirmed your drive to medicine.

Basically, they want to see that you have some personal experience with what the delivery of medicine is like and that you have some personal experience in seeing what a physician does with his/her time during the working day. Otherwise, how can you say with certainty or credibility that you want to be a physician? That's how the argument usually goes.

 

[noshie]

How do you know what it is like to be a doctor? About the struggles that they face, about the way they help patients? I think that the only way to really know that you want to dedicate alot of time and really the rest of your life to a profession is to find out what it really means to be a doctor. We are bombarded by things on TV and what others say, so many may have the wrong idea of what a doctor really does. So in my opinion you should have alot of experience in the medical field. There is nothing worse than spending 8 years in school and realizing that you really hate your job. As for the adcoms, I would think that they would feel that if you dont put effort into finding out if you would like this profession then they may be wasting time and money to teach you. I have heard many stories of people getting out of med school and then changing their profession. Maybe you do know that you really really want this, but the only way to convince others is to show them that you have made the effort and have dedicated part of your time to finding out and exploring the profession. Your GPA and MCAT are awesome, but grades are only part of the picture. Just because someone is an A student doesnt mean they will be able to communicate kindly and empatheticly to their patients.

 

[NewNick]

The number of hrs looks small (to me). Dude, you will have a tough time to explain in the interview (if you're lucky enough to have one). If you've been volunteering 2 hrs/week for about at least 1 year, you would have more than what you have now. Good luck.