Volunteering hours and traveling time

[wizzed101]

Very silly question. So I've been regularly doing a 4 hours shift every week at a "local" hospital. The quotation marks are because I actually have to spend 2 hours in total traveling time (1 hour to and 1 hour back). I could've done this at a hospital 10 mins away but it appears that they are overloaded with volunteers and don't need that much help. Plus, their supervisor told me that I'll just sit at the reception desk greeting people anyway. Where I am now, I feel needed and appreciated. It just feels nice.

I know that the 2 hours will never count toward clinical hours because driving is not clinical. But does it count at all? Non-clinical?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SailorMD]

Commute time only counts if you are commuting during your work hours from one job to another (e.g. Working at a retail company and going to see a vendor), it does not count before you clock in or after you clock out unfortunately. Now if you were working on a research project during that time, that may be a different story.


Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile

 

[Goro]

If I saw that you tried to count travel time as volunteer time, I'd reject you on the spot. I don't paid to commute. I get paid to work. So ditto your getting credit for actually volunteering.

Not all volunteering needs to be done in a hospital.

 

[wizzed101]

So should I mention it somehow? I just want to show the dedication because I hate commuting. A waste of time, a waste of life. I don't actually need more non-clinical hours, and the hours added would make no numerical difference to what I already have. I just want it to count for something lol. Just a psychological thing.

There is no other option/other options are the same with less responsibility. And frankly, I do this because I need those hours not because I suddenly become more altruistic 1 year prior to my application. I want my hours to be meaningful. This volunteering position actually makes me feel that, except for the 2-hour-commute.

 

[Pusheen]

So should I mention it somehow? I just want to show the dedication because I hate commuting. A waste of time, a waste of life. I don't actually need more non-clinical hours, and the hours added would make no numerical difference to what I already have. I just want it to count for something lol. Just a psychological thing.

There is no other option/other options are the same with less responsibility. And frankly, I do this because I need those hours not because I suddenly become more altruistic 1 year prior to my application. I want my hours to be meaningful. This volunteering position actually makes me feel that, except for the 2-hour-commute.

I had a 3 hour round trip commute for one of my most meaningful activities. I didn't include those hours in my count, but in a few of my secondaries about the activity I mentioned it offhand. Reason being I was particularly interested in that specific activity and wanted to demonstrate that I was dedicated to it despite the inconvenience.

 

[innercellmass]

You made the tradeoff of a longer commute for a more meaningful and involved experience, which seems like it was a good decision. But live with that decision honestly, don't pad your hours with commute time any more than you would bill an employer for time spent commuting to work. Personally, I'd focus on making the commute time feel like less of a waste in other ways--find some good podcasts to queue up while you're driving, listen to audiobooks, call someone (as long as it's on speaker!), whatever.

 

[wizzed101]

^Thanks!

 

[vellez]

That defeats the "spirit" of monitoring hours. Will anyone catch you? Probably not, but IMHO I think it is shady and cheapens your work. Everyone hates commuting, join the club. If you tried to say this should count as hours, I'd probably throw your app away; it's just an annoying sleazy thing to do. I'm not an on adcom, full disclosure.

 

[aldol16]

If you're thinking about this, you're thinking too much into it. Nobody is going to look at your application and say "This kid only volunteered for 300 hours versus the other guy who did 500. Let's reject the first guy." What's important is that you learn from your clinical experiences and have things to say about them when asked. If you say you worked for 300 hours in a clinic, you better have something to say about how it influenced your decision to go into medicine and what you learned about patients/medicine from it. Some people volunteer for that amount of time and they only rarely speak to a patient. That defeats the purpose. Their time would have been better spent abandoning medicine, getting an internship in a field they enjoy, and switching to that field instead. The point of volunteering is to give you experience in serving others and hours cannot quantify the value of that.

 

[LoveBeingHuman:)]

If I saw that you tried to count travel time as volunteer time, I'd reject you on the spot. I don't paid to commute. I get paid to work. So ditto your getting credit for actually volunteering.

Not all volunteering needs to be done in a hospital.

I am in a club that does events off campus. We travel there and back as a club. Therefore, the commute time is taken into account on the final club time tracker. What should I do?

 

[candbgirl]

So should I mention it somehow? I just want to show the dedication because I hate commuting. A waste of time, a waste of life. I don't actually need more non-clinical hours, and the hours added would make no numerical difference to what I already have. I just want it to count for something lol. Just a psychological thing.

There is no other option/other options are the same with less responsibility. And frankly, I do this because I need those hours not because I suddenly become more altruistic 1 year prior to my application. I want my hours to be meaningful. This volunteering position actually makes me feel that, except for the 2-hour-commute.

Really?

I've never heard of anyone counting commuting time as part of the activity. That really seems like padding.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

 

[JustaDO]

This thread is a perfect example of why quality > quantity.