Is Hospital Volunteering a Necessary Clinical Experience?

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Hello. I was thinking more about experiences and wanted to ask a question I haven't been able to wring an answer out of the search results yet:

Do you feel traditional hospital volunteering a necessary clinical experience? I have hours in hospice (nursing facilities) and free clinics, so I have insight into healthcare, patients, and how physicians and other healthcare practitioners can make a difference in people's lives. Still, none of these opportunities are in a traditional hospital. I have 100~ hours of hospital volunteering from high school that gave me great insight into the workings of a hospital, but shadowing gave me those same insights and more.

So, my question: would volunteering at a hospital give me valuable clinical experience that won't be covered by my other clinical experiences or shadowing?

I'm wondering if only having 100 hours is the reason I didn't feel hospital volunteering was as informative as my other experiences (it still taught me a lot, just not anything shadowing didn't) and didn't continue it upon matriculating to college. Am I mistakenly missing out?

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[Mr.Smile12]

Hospitals are business entities, so each one is different. Your experience with a Mayo Clinic will be different from Bellevue in NYC. Suburban locations differ from inner city hospitals. Rural hospitals are underfunded and underresourced.

So yes, since you will be doing hospital rotations in academic centers when you become a med student, it would be helpful. Not every ward is the same. Do you need many hours since you have a lot of variety? I think that depends on who you ask.

The high school hours won't really count. I don't know what you did or observed, but pre pandemic was different...

[Geez... autocorrect...]

 

[LizzyM]

You need clinical experience. It can be paid or unpaid.

Most medical care is delivered in outpatient settings these days so it is not unreasonable to have such experience. That said, hospitals have dedicated offices that train and supervise volunteers and are much easier to get into as a volunteer than many outpatient offices. (Again, you don't need to volunteer if you can find paid employment in a clinical setting instead.)

Hospitals are special, unusual places and some medical education naturally takes place there. Having had some experience is such a place before starting med school can be helpful. Nursing homes and hospice is a different experience because the goals of care are different and the expectations (long term stays vs short-term end of life) are different from the typical hospital stay.

Most people do not list experiences from high school on their applications, usually for lack of space and the desire to list more recent experiences. There is no rule against it but generally the adcom thought is, "why did you stop? if you want to do medicine, why would you not continue with clinical experiences?"

 

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Hospitals are business entities, so each one is different. Your experience with a Mayo Clinic will be different from Bellevue in NYC. Suburban locations differ from inner city hospitals. Rural hospitals are underfunded and underresourced.

So yes, since you will be doing hospital rotations in academic centers when you become a need student, it would be helpful. Not every ward is the same. Do you need many hours since you have a lot of variety? I think that depends on who you ask.

Hospitals are special, unusual places and some medical education naturally takes place there. Having had some experience is such a place before starting med school can be helpful. Nursing homes and hospice is a different experience because the goals of care are different and the expectations (long term stays vs short-term end of life) are different from the typical hospital stay.

Gotcha. Thanks for answering! I'll plan to seek out some volunteering in hospitals over the summer then.

The high school hours won't really count. I don't knew what you did or observed, but pre pandemic was different...

Most people do not list experiences from high school on their applications, usually for lack of space and the desire to list more recent experiences. There is no rule against it but generally the adcom thought is, "why did you stop? if you want to do medicine, why would you not continue with clinical experiences?"

Makes sense--- I had no intention of putting that on my application alone, especially since it was early in high school (the pandemic closed down the teen program for my following junior/senior summers) and as Mr.Smile pointed out, the experience reflects a different era of healthcare pre-COVID.

However, if I start volunteering at the hospital again (likely the same one), would it be odd to include it alongside my recent experience? From what I understand, AMCAS allows for ranges of activity timelines-- would it make sense to include those 100 hours pre-pandemic, or would it be wiser to only include my recent volunteering? For reference, my 100 hours was summer 2019, so quite a while ago.

 

[LizzyM]

It would be reasonable, and possible with AMCAS, to list two bouts of volunteerism at the same facility.

 

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It would be reasonable, and possible with AMCAS, to list two bouts of volunteerism at the same facility.

Great, thank you!