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Volunteering is overrated
Started by Voldemort
I agree with the OP. I hold an actual position at the hospital and I frequently see the volunteers walking around the floors changing waters, giving towels, sitting in the gift shop, and pushing around the gift cart. While they probably are providing a semi-valuable service to the patient/RN, I believe they could be doing more to enhance their hospital experience (e.g. sit and keep company with patients/shadow a specific health care professional, etc).
Whenever I see a volunteer of age (around 17ish) I usually recommend for them to apply for a real position at the hospital. I've learned that as you establish credibility with the staff and your face becomes a familiar one you are allotted more trust and therefore allowed to do more.
Hospital experience? Hospital experience my ass. Half these kids are too young, too passive to aggressively seek out a more personal experience while at the hospital.
Whenever I see a volunteer of age (around 17ish) I usually recommend for them to apply for a real position at the hospital. I've learned that as you establish credibility with the staff and your face becomes a familiar one you are allotted more trust and therefore allowed to do more.
Hospital experience? Hospital experience my ass. Half these kids are too young, too passive to aggressively seek out a more personal experience while at the hospital.
I volunteer at an ER, and I'm not a kid. I think I could easily get hired as a paid employee, but I then would have all the stress of being supervised and being 100% productive. While I do work hard, and for free, I can take 15 minutes to talk to patients about their treatment, or various staff from the administration to doctors and nurses about their roles, and accomplishments, and how they view medicine.
To say that volunteering is a waste of time is pretty short sighted, in my opinion. Here's a quote which brings this whole humanity perspective home. From an article by Fitzhugh Mullen, author of White Coat, Clenched Fist:
It is not easy to be a good doctor today. It is not easy to work within the profession and maintain one's sense of humanity, one's humility, and one's commitment to service....
The first battle will be against the forces of complacency, laziness, and fatigue and will have to be fought almost daily during one's career. The enemy will make it too easy for you to become insensitive, curt, greedy, prejudgmental, racist, rich, brusque, and thoughtless.... Imperceptibly, one will cease to be a doctor and become a 'doctoroid.'
A 'doctoroid' is a bright, young physician with good MCAT scores, good grades, excellent subspecialty electives, commendable National Board scores, Board certification in one of a number of specialties, and an essential inability to deal with people or communities. A 'doctoroid' sees its medical degree as a game of tennis - a hard won personal skill to be used primarily for self-gratification. A 'doctoroid' is well-to-do, dresses like a doctor, sounds like a doctor, and behaves like a doctor but it has no heart. Inside it is all bank accounts....
To say that volunteering is a waste of time is pretty short sighted, in my opinion. Here's a quote which brings this whole humanity perspective home. From an article by Fitzhugh Mullen, author of White Coat, Clenched Fist:
It is not easy to be a good doctor today. It is not easy to work within the profession and maintain one's sense of humanity, one's humility, and one's commitment to service....
The first battle will be against the forces of complacency, laziness, and fatigue and will have to be fought almost daily during one's career. The enemy will make it too easy for you to become insensitive, curt, greedy, prejudgmental, racist, rich, brusque, and thoughtless.... Imperceptibly, one will cease to be a doctor and become a 'doctoroid.'
A 'doctoroid' is a bright, young physician with good MCAT scores, good grades, excellent subspecialty electives, commendable National Board scores, Board certification in one of a number of specialties, and an essential inability to deal with people or communities. A 'doctoroid' sees its medical degree as a game of tennis - a hard won personal skill to be used primarily for self-gratification. A 'doctoroid' is well-to-do, dresses like a doctor, sounds like a doctor, and behaves like a doctor but it has no heart. Inside it is all bank accounts....
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A quotation with teeth! It stings!
I enjoyed volunteering a lot. It wasn't fancy, I was in an ER but I felt like I got phased out. The orderlies seemed to be getting upset that I was taking patients to exam rooms or to other floors to get admitted. It became awkward when I realized that my little volunteer job was impinging on somebody's livelihood.
I enjoyed volunteering a lot. It wasn't fancy, I was in an ER but I felt like I got phased out. The orderlies seemed to be getting upset that I was taking patients to exam rooms or to other floors to get admitted. It became awkward when I realized that my little volunteer job was impinging on somebody's livelihood.
Voldemort said:
You are correct Voldy (love the sn by the way, even though you got you a$$ kicked by a baby and are scared of ol' Dumbles).
If you want clinical experience (for its own sake as well as to improve your application) you are much better off getting a job (nurse aide, EMT, PCA, surgical tech, etc) than volunteering, because you will have actual responsibility and get to do hands on stuff. If anyone interviewing you says why didnt you do any volunteer work (you can still do a little here and there) and not do more, you can say that you needed the money (mommy and daddy arent giving everyone a free ride) and spent as much time as you could manage doing that, plus because it was great experience.
Even though I worked through college I did some volunteering. I used to play darts with blind people (had to spot for them) and volunteer at a cancer clinic. Instead of passing water pitchers I just started talking to people who wanted company. That was great experience.
I seem to have covered the whole spectrum.
I began volunteering idealistically, quickly transitioned to mildly disliking it. The hospital was interesting academically speaking but in a practical sense: all the people on my floor were unconsious, no family visits during my timeslots, very few doctors, and a young surgeon hitting on me.
Me: "no I DONT want to go to the bar thanks"
On the positive side I the sole master of the juice cart --yes, for the unconsious population--so... take that as you will I guess.
I then switched to ER and Peds ER rotation and found that I really enjoyed it There was more that I could do (talk to patients/families, assist nurses and doctors etc) so where you are is everything. Just being brave and talking to patients makes it a lot more fun than just stocking towels/juice cart. In the end it was a very interesting and valuable experience.
But, I will say that I didnt learn much about the life of a doctor from volunteering and as far as the volunteering giving you greater insight into dilemas of the patient(ie extreme empathy, doctoroid avoidance)...um ... I doubt it. People either empathize or they dont (or arent at a life-stage where they can). My mom passed away from ovarian cancer junior year (almost a year ago exactly now) and I can tell you that there is NO part of volunteering that will allow you to understand what difficulties such as this mean for the patient(hey its true). Thats life experience.
HOWEVER, I can say that as a family member I appreciated all the volunteers a lot. Probably a lot more than they knew because I often forgot to say thanks. You guys do make a big difference. Furthermore contact with people having chronic illnesses gives good insight into the limits of current medicine, the need for research and the fact that not everything is fixable (whatever the surgeons in the audience might say. 🙂 ) But I'll get off my interview horse and just say that whenever I volunteer now I try to remember that and just talk to people. And hey, Im a math major who wants to go into academic medicine (read socially inept by nature) so if I can like it y'all might as well give it a shot.
I began volunteering idealistically, quickly transitioned to mildly disliking it. The hospital was interesting academically speaking but in a practical sense: all the people on my floor were unconsious, no family visits during my timeslots, very few doctors, and a young surgeon hitting on me.
Me: "no I DONT want to go to the bar thanks"
On the positive side I the sole master of the juice cart --yes, for the unconsious population--so... take that as you will I guess.
I then switched to ER and Peds ER rotation and found that I really enjoyed it There was more that I could do (talk to patients/families, assist nurses and doctors etc) so where you are is everything. Just being brave and talking to patients makes it a lot more fun than just stocking towels/juice cart. In the end it was a very interesting and valuable experience.
But, I will say that I didnt learn much about the life of a doctor from volunteering and as far as the volunteering giving you greater insight into dilemas of the patient(ie extreme empathy, doctoroid avoidance)...um ... I doubt it. People either empathize or they dont (or arent at a life-stage where they can). My mom passed away from ovarian cancer junior year (almost a year ago exactly now) and I can tell you that there is NO part of volunteering that will allow you to understand what difficulties such as this mean for the patient(hey its true). Thats life experience.
HOWEVER, I can say that as a family member I appreciated all the volunteers a lot. Probably a lot more than they knew because I often forgot to say thanks. You guys do make a big difference. Furthermore contact with people having chronic illnesses gives good insight into the limits of current medicine, the need for research and the fact that not everything is fixable (whatever the surgeons in the audience might say. 🙂 ) But I'll get off my interview horse and just say that whenever I volunteer now I try to remember that and just talk to people. And hey, Im a math major who wants to go into academic medicine (read socially inept by nature) so if I can like it y'all might as well give it a shot.
I volunteered as a radio dj and with the lion's club; both were fun and I was surrounded with friends and good people. I agree, was not looking forward to volunteering for my application's sake, but seriously, in 4 years of undergrad, you should run in to something that interests you.
Do stuff that interests you. If helping people in any way does not interest you (and there are about a billion ways), then i dunno...who's like that anyways? Everyone likes to feel useful.
Do stuff that interests you. If helping people in any way does not interest you (and there are about a billion ways), then i dunno...who's like that anyways? Everyone likes to feel useful.
I agree that for clinical expierence, paid is better.
OTOH, I quite enjoy being a volunteer (care extender at Hoag hospital in So Cal incase anyone wondered/cared/is one) and I can see what everyone talked about in this thread. Volunteering is what you make of it. You have to push yourself because no one will push you. The staff won't care if you just sit on your ass all day long, but will enjoy your help if you push yourself. It is just easier to just do nothing.
Generally, I have a lot of autonomy because I do work. Yes, I have had to deal with code browns or helping the ER RN clean the person who fell and had to lay in the same place for 4 days (I also think that it is ignorant to think that you won't come across code browns/smelly patients in your MD/OD career. Its just not your "job" to take care of it), but I generally get to have a lot of patient contact too. In the ER, for example, its nice to be able to see codes/procedures run and have someone who is happy to explain what is going on. Yes, generally we won't be able to participate in it, but you are not going to be skimish when you see it in med school (like surgery).
If you work, I find it hard to not see how you make a difference. Sure, you won't "save" someones life (grant it that it is possible if you are the one to see the code first and get help [I was about 30 seconds away from this]), but you can make the staff more efficient and even get things done that might not otherwise get done. Yes, makeing a improvised stress ball (glove filled with water) for a recovering patient with a neck injury so that he can work his hands while laying in bed at night [PT was already closed and was the only department that we knew that had them] might not get you into med school and might not mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but it means everything in the world to that patient when you make it because the nursing staff is too busy with meds, reports, etc to get it done.
Besides, it'll just look my LOR from a ER charge nurse look all that better when no one else has one (it is amazing the amount of fellow volunteers that are surprised when I tell them this).
OTOH, I quite enjoy being a volunteer (care extender at Hoag hospital in So Cal incase anyone wondered/cared/is one) and I can see what everyone talked about in this thread. Volunteering is what you make of it. You have to push yourself because no one will push you. The staff won't care if you just sit on your ass all day long, but will enjoy your help if you push yourself. It is just easier to just do nothing.
Generally, I have a lot of autonomy because I do work. Yes, I have had to deal with code browns or helping the ER RN clean the person who fell and had to lay in the same place for 4 days (I also think that it is ignorant to think that you won't come across code browns/smelly patients in your MD/OD career. Its just not your "job" to take care of it), but I generally get to have a lot of patient contact too. In the ER, for example, its nice to be able to see codes/procedures run and have someone who is happy to explain what is going on. Yes, generally we won't be able to participate in it, but you are not going to be skimish when you see it in med school (like surgery).
If you work, I find it hard to not see how you make a difference. Sure, you won't "save" someones life (grant it that it is possible if you are the one to see the code first and get help [I was about 30 seconds away from this]), but you can make the staff more efficient and even get things done that might not otherwise get done. Yes, makeing a improvised stress ball (glove filled with water) for a recovering patient with a neck injury so that he can work his hands while laying in bed at night [PT was already closed and was the only department that we knew that had them] might not get you into med school and might not mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but it means everything in the world to that patient when you make it because the nursing staff is too busy with meds, reports, etc to get it done.
Besides, it'll just look my LOR from a ER charge nurse look all that better when no one else has one (it is amazing the amount of fellow volunteers that are surprised when I tell them this).
