Volunteering in Boston?

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I posted this question in the nontrad forum and haven't gotten any responses, so forgive me for crashing the pre-allo area...

I'll be in the Boston/Cambridge area for a year beginning this summer and would like a volunteer opportunity with a good amount of patient contact to help me decide if medicine is truly what I want to pursue at this point in my life. I know the area is full of medical facilities...anyone have a particularly good experience anywhere?? I won't have a car, so the place will need to be T-able...

Thanks for your time!

NYM :)

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I know Boston Medical Center has the program that I do here in Florida called Reach Out and Read. Reach Out and Read is for reading to children in the waiting rooms. It will give you significant clinical contact.

Furthermore, there are numerous hospitals affiliated with HMS and BU and Tufts. So finding good volunteer opportunities at these hospitals shouldn't be too hard of a problem. I'd look up the hospitals that are affiliated with these schools and call their voluntary dept to give an idea of what kind of opportunities are available.
 
try B&W and MGH. they are all very T accessible. i dont know if the volunteer programs they offer give you much patient interaction. your best bet is to contact your personal physician and network through that. getting into upclose clinical experience is surprisingly difficult to obtain in my opinion
 
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I volunteer at Dana Farber and its a great experience. They have a lot of different opportunities for volunteers, so I would definitely check them out. Here's the link (I applied online and heard back a few days later).

http://www.dfci.org/how/volunteer/
 
I would not recommend Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. I volunteered there for 4 months and never got any real patient contact. After speaking with the volunteer office about my goals, they had nothing to offer me.

Instead, I'm going to be taking a hospice volunteer training course starting at the end of April. I assume you won't be here yet? If you are, PM me and I'll give you some info. Although, you can't get there by T but you may be able to go by bus.
 
In the Longwood Medical area, which is very T-accessible, there are several hospitals (Beth Israel, Brigham&Women's, Children's, Dana Farber, Joslin Diabetes...), and they all have websites with info and a volunteer office phone number. Look into them now because you will need to fill out the paperwork and go through a background check, and this can take a couple of months. Mass General is also T-accessible (or there's a shuttle from Longwood), and has many volunteer opportunities.
 
I'm currently volunteering at Beth Israel (Longwood) as a surgical liaison (lots of patient contact). It's 4hrs/week for 1 year. However, Brigham and Women's has a great, very structured program designed to help med school people get clinical exposure. Since you have a year, that would be good too, since you have to work for 6 months before they'll give you a letter.

The link is http://www.brighamandwomens.org/volunteer/premedical.aspx?subID=submenu1
 
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