Internships and Extracurriculars

[IndieMed]

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Yes I know that pre-med students must have medical experience when applying..volunteering in a hospital, shadowing a doctor..etc. But honestly its not so easy to come across these opportunities. I have asked my doctor and she said I couldn't shadow because of privacy issues so she referred me to a hospital which was too far away for me to commute to. I also applied to volunteer at a hospital and after a year they've never gotten back to me.

Now my question is, while yes a rare opportunity most probably will come up for me to work in a medical setting before I apply for med school, do med schools mind if you have done other completely non related volunteer work to medicine? I've been volunteering for NY Cares (idk if anyone has ever heard of it) and these are mainly food pantry projects/helping feed the homeless/elderly. I hope to complete around 100 (more or less) hours depending on the feedback I get from this post. I will start volunteering in a library for 2 days a week for possibly a year, and I'm looking into an internship on helping immigrant youth (to be the next generation of social justice leaders through leadership and professional development opportunities) which I will be paid $5000 for (possibly ongoing for about a year).

I know that none of these are medical related and that's my entire concern. Should I even continue to pursue any of them or are they a complete waste of time. This also might sound like a stupid question but what do medical schools think of part time/full time jobs? Do they completely disregard that because (everyone needs pocket money obviously) or will they question as to why you didn't spend that time in a hospital/doctors office? Thank you so much in advance for your replies.

 

[IndieMed]

NYCares is not a waste of time. But you need significant clinical/medically related exposure to be considered a viable candidate. If you are in NY, depending where, there are many opportunities with doctors, hospitals, clinics, depts of health, nursing homes, volunteer ambulance, etc that should be looked at. PM if you want to brainstorm on this as by "the city"

how about the library volunteer work and intership?

 

[Wildhorse]

Anything is better than nothing. Clinical volunteer experience isn't necessarily mandatory, it just seems to be very very very highly preferred (look at schools on MSAR, most have ~90% of students having prior clinical experience). Any volunteer experience at all shows that you don't mind helping people. Experience in a clinical setting is just for the sake of familiarity, so you can prove you are still willing to embrace that setting & won't be turned away from it. The idea of hospital volunteer experience is a one-two pummel. It seems to me that the volunteer portion is slightly more important than the hospital portion.

I'm in a similar boat, I've put in applications not just to one hospital, but all hospitals within a half hour drive, & repeated every 6 months, & called about the applications, & sometimes gone down to the hospitals wearing a bow-tie to shake the hand of the volunteer coordinator. No dice.
I've also tried to find shadowing opportunities by emailing numerous doctors at different hospitals with no luck, but that's more just for my personal benefit, as I've read many time on this very site that shadowing doesn't count for anything on your application.

I volunteer other places instead, mainly the local SPCA. I love it so much, but I am worried it won't be the most favorable thing, being that it's not human-centric.
I believe I could get a volunteer position at a private pharmacy near my school. I've so far neglected because it doesn't sound particularly interesting, I don't think it would feel super fulfilling, & I'm not entirely sure it counts as the same as a hospital volunteer job. I think I shall be changing my stance on that soon because a friend of mine has been doing it & raves about how cool it is & how accomplished it makes him feel. I'm not sure he's not crazy, but I'll give it a go. I would like to know if others here think that "counts"?? If so, it might be something to look into & would likely be an easier spot to get.