Pharmacist to Medical School Question (extracurriculars, volunteering)

[JerryGarciasghost]

Hello everyone,

I graduated from pharmacy school in 2008 and have been working in a few different settings since that time. Currently, I am an emergency medicine clinical pharmacist and most of my time at my job is in direct patient care working with physicians and nurses in the emergency department. Over my career, I also have a wide variety of clinical experiences including working in hospice, long-term care facilities, substance abuse/mental health, and working in the traditional retail/community setting. Now, I am considering going back to medical school and I plan on preparing for that by completing my bachelor’s degree in biochemistry (I gained acceptance to pharmacy school before completing my bachelor’s) which will require me to complete around 40 hours of upper-level biology coursework.

With this much clinical experience, what type of extracurricular and volunteer experience should I be looking to add to my application? Moonlighting as a full-time clinical pharmacist and going back to school will take up nearly all of my time and I am not sure how much EC and volunteering would be expected by a person in my position. Can anyone help enlighten me?

Thanks

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[J_pharm]

As a non-trad with a somewhat similar background to you, for EC/volunteer experience, I put down different collateral duties I had at work that demonstrated leadership (e.g. chairing a committee) or different things I had volunteered for that were outside my regular job duties and wasn't getting paid overtime for (e.g. volunteering to precept pharmacy students doing HTN screenings at a community health fair = short-term clinical volunteering). And even though one of my volunteer experiences was 10+ years old from my undergrad days, I included it because it was an extensive and meaningful volunteer experience. I also had prior military experience (even before going to pharmacy school), so I kind of hit a good chunk of "community service" points with that.

Even with extensive clinical work experience, you should still dedicate an experience to clinical shadowing just to help adcoms check the shadowing hours box (at least that's some advice I got on SDN a couple of years ago and it worked for me). It's also a good idea to list a hobby.