Research vs. Hospital Experience

[skinnylindsay]

I'm new to the boards, so let me just say "Hi!" first of all. I did a search and didn't find anything on this topic. So if I overlooked it, I apologize

I was just wondering if anyone knew how med schools view volunteer experience in a hospital vs. undergraduate research projects. I volunteered in the radiology department for a semester (I'm interested in being a radiologist), and am now doing undergrad research. I know the ideal would be to do both, but spending 12-15 hrs/week in the lab on top of class and ECs, it would be difficult to squeeze it in.

Would a medical school prefer volunteer experience over research, or would significant research experience be just as favorable? I don't want an admissions board to look at my application and wonder why I didn't apply to grad school instead.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[PariPari]

seriously, you should do a search, but b/c i was bit by the research bug, i will tell you if you can do a tiny bit (like an honors thesis or Howard Hughes/other summer thing) & then spent most of your time getting clinical exposure, it might be best, but search will get you a lot more info on this that you could ever want

 

[nekrogg]

seriously, you should do a search, but b/c i was bit by the research bug, i will tell you if you can do a tiny bit (like an honors thesis or Howard Hughes/other summer thing) & then spent most of your time getting clinical exposure, it might be best, but search will get you a lot more info on this that you could ever want

word. know what a doctor does 1st do research 2nd. except in some of the more prestigious research laden schools this principle seems a bit skewed.

 

[Cinnameg]

I'm new to the boards, so let me just say "Hi!" first of all. I did a search and didn't find anything on this topic. So if I overlooked it, I apologize

I was just wondering if anyone knew how med schools view volunteer experience in a hospital vs. undergraduate research projects. I volunteered in the radiology department for a semester (I'm interested in being a radiologist), and am now doing undergrad research. I know the ideal would be to do both, but spending 12-15 hrs/week in the lab on top of class and ECs, it would be difficult to squeeze it in.

Would a medical school prefer volunteer experience over research, or would significant research experience be just as favorable? I don't want an admissions board to look at my application and wonder why I didn't apply to grad school instead.

I'd say err on the side of doing some serious research. You MUST shadow a doctor at some point, but putting a lot of energy into this won't help you a whole lot, because there's not much that you can actually do while shadowing a doctor, so you won't end up with anything very impressive to an admissions committee. I did a lot of doctor shadowing, but in the end they just cared that I did it, not how much I did it. At interviews, committees were much more interested in my research background.

Also, it really depends what you mean by "volunteer experience in a hospital." Keep in mind that almost every applicant has volunteered to some extent in a hospital, so if you're talking shadowing, or helping with chart organizing, or feeding patients and reading to them, sadly, this won't mean much and won't help you much. It'll hurt you if you DON'T do it, but it won't help you much if you do, you won't stand out. If you're going to be the volunteer coordinator for a hospital, or do something really unique and substantive, that's different. I worked as a crisis counselor on 2 hotlines, as a support group leader, as a case manager for schizophrenic men, and as a behavioral therapist for autistic kids . . . and while I did get asked about these experiences, what seemed to matter the most at interviews was my research background.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is find some sort of clinical research project that will put you in contact with patients as you do your research. If it's supervised by an MD, even better. But really and truly, an interesting research topic that you know in and out will help you out a lot.