Volunteering vs Work Experience as a Pre Med

[Kwhi9705]

Hello! I am currently a Freshman Chemistry Major on the Pre-Med Track and I am starting to seriously think about my future and getting into medical school. As I look through other forums and post a lot of people suggest that volunteering in a hospital is an unwritten pre-req for medical school. I was wondering what people think would be better on an application: having a lot of volunteer hours or having an actual job in a hospital. I was thinking about taking a class over the summer to get certified to be a phlebotomist, or an x-ray tech, or something along those lines and then get a job at a hospital near my college for the next 3 years. I think there are pros and cons to both options. Both give me experience with patients and experience being in a hospital. But I think the job may give me more hands-on experience than the volunteering would. Also having the job would help me pay for my current tuition, which would mean less debt from undergrad schooling because I am going to have to take out loans for medical school. I am very conflicted about what to do and really want to make the best decision to get me where I want to be in the future.

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[calivianya]

I have no idea, so I did both. I've had paid clinical jobs for years, but I picked up a clinical volunteering position as well just in case.

Close examination of the MSAR shows that most medical schools do NOT care about paid clinical experience, IMO. When many, many schools have ~30% or less of first year matriculants with paid clinical experience, but >80% volunteer clinical experience and >80% research experience, I smell a rat when anyone tries to tell me those schools like paid clinical experience.

You can't tell me that out of, say, ~9000 applicants and ~100 matriculated students, less than 30 applicants out of 9000 actually worked for pay in healthcare.

 

[LizzyM]

I have no idea, so I did both. I've had paid clinical jobs for years, but I picked up a clinical volunteering position as well just in case.

Close examination of the MSAR shows that most medical schools do NOT care about paid clinical experience, IMO. When many, many schools have ~30% or less of first year matriculants with paid clinical experience, but >80% volunteer clinical experience and >80% research experience, I smell a rat when anyone tries to tell me those schools like paid clinical experience.

You can't tell me that out of, say, ~9000 applicants and ~100 matriculated students, less than 30 applicants out of 9000 actually worked for pay in healthcare.

This is NOT true. You see that 30% of first year matriculants have had paid clinical experience BUT you do not know what proportion of applicants had paid experience. For all we know, paid experience is both rare and highly desirable. The data you are providing don't tell us if that is the case or not.


@Kwhi9705 radiation tech takes one to two years of full-time training so that is a poor choice. Phlebotomist is a clinical role but it is very routine with minimal time with each patient. It isn't a job that is going to impress adcoms.

Frankly, rather than a clinical job per se, I'd encourage you to find work (if you need to work) in retail sales, hospitality or something similar that has you serving the public and dealing, sometimes, with their complaints. It is a good way to learn about human nature and to become comfortable dealing with upset and disgruntled people.

 

[Goro]

This is NOT true. You see that 30% of first year matriculants have had paid clinical experience BUT you do not know what proportion of applicants had paid experience. For all we know, paid experience is both rare and highly desirable. The data you are providing don't tell us if that is the case or not.


@Kwhi9705 radiation tech takes one to two years of full-time training so that is a poor choice. Phlebotomist is a clinical role but it is very routine with minimal time with each patient. It isn't a job that is going to impress adcoms.

Frankly, rather than a clinical job per se, I'd encourage you to find work (if you need to work) in retail sales, hospitality or something similar that has you serving the public and dealing, sometimes, with their complaints. It is a good way to learn about human nature and to become comfortable dealing with upset and disgruntled people.

I'll disagree with my learned colleague here, because as someone who has done phlebotomy, I have a respect for other people who have done it. It's patient contact experience, and a physical one at that.
My own two cents is that we want you to have patient contact experience. Whether this is paid or not is up to you. But having work experience is good in my book, AND it's also important to show off your altruistic side.

So how do you do this? You can work in one venue, and volunteer in another.

 

[workaholic181]

It's not easy to get, but having both volunteering and paid work IMO goes a long way for an app.

If you could absolutely only do one, I would prob pick volunteering as a student because of the flexibility and expressed commitment to helping your community for no immediate reward. But it really is possible to find paid clinical work (albeit not easy).

I worked with x ray techs and it's both difficult and time consumptive to get those degrees.. also harder to find work than it used to be, at least in my area.

There are untrained clinical jobs, like being a patient care assistant. Scribing also rarely requires prior experience.

If I could go back in time, I would have tried to get my CNA license in a summer program or something. That will open a ton of doors for you employment wise.

 

[calivianya]

This is NOT true. You see that 30% of first year matriculants have had paid clinical experience BUT you do not know what proportion of applicants had paid experience. For all we know, paid experience is both rare and highly desirable. The data you are providing don't tell us if that is the case or not.

I'm having a lot of trouble believing that paid clinical experience is rare. Almost every single premed I know in person has paid clinical experience. Granted, these are of varying significance (lots of scribes/phlebotomists, some CNAs, a few EMTs), and the people I know are a small sample of the overall premed pool. Still, in schools with a 9000+ applicant pool, I'd wager at least several hundred, if not several thousand, have paid clinical experience. The fact that the matriculant paid clinical experience percentage is so low at some places says more to me about the school than the applicants.

 

[LizzyM]

I'm having a lot of trouble believing that paid clinical experience is rare. Almost every single premed I know in person has paid clinical experience. Granted, these are of varying significance (lots of scribes/phlebotomists, some CNAs, a few EMTs), and the people I know are a small sample of the overall premed pool. Still, in schools with a 9000+ applicant pool, I'd wager at least several hundred, if not several thousand, have paid clinical experience. The fact that the matriculant paid clinical experience percentage is so low at some places says more to me about the school than the applicants.

I guess it is in how you define "rare". More than 80% of applicants have research experience and a similar proportion have volunteer clinical experience. Those are not rare.

EMT experience has, from what I've seen, often been a mix of paid and volunteer experience. Scribes are far more common than they were 5 years ago and that is changing the proportion of applicants who have had a paid clinical work experience. However, I believe that paid clinical work experience might be present in 20% of applicants. Keep in mind, too, that health professions majors have a relatively poor track record in getting into medical school (and lower GPA and MCATs) compared to those who majored in math or philosophy so that could skew the data a bit in the other direction (paid work experience making it less likely to be admitted) but I do recall that the proportion of applicants in those majors is small and the effect is likely to be small. Keep in mind, too, that if there is a correlation it may not be causation but the cause may lie more in the realm of academic performance.

 

[calivianya]

so there are 50,000+ applicants per year to MD school. That is the whittled down 3-4 years after start of college. So at least 250,000 exist in the overall premed pool in any given year though at different stages of their preparation . So now how many do you know? and how is that representative of the pool at large? The occurrence of paid clinical employment in matriculants is rare enough that it is not even offered as an answer choice in the MSQ (see question 7 https://www.aamc.org/download/474258/data/msq2016report.pdf#page=8) .

I was of the opinion that paid clinical employment wasn't on there because it wasn't something AAMC cared about, vs. it being rare, but I could always be wrong.

I know less than 20 premeds well enough to know what they do for a living, so I'm not assuming everyone has paid healthcare experience just because the people I know do. I'm also not assuming if I know that many people applying to med school who work in healthcare, that I have managed to encounter only a rare 1% of applicants or something like that.

Even if only 10% of applicants to a school had paid clinical employment, that would be more than enough to fill a first year medical school class, should the school choose to select for that. The only point I'm making is, in general, it does not seem like most med schools choose to select for paid clinical experience. I have found schools where the first year class paid clinical employment is close to or exceeds 50%, but they tend to be state schools instead of private schools... making their secondary fee essentially a donation for all but their in-state applicants.

 

[Geo16]

This is NOT true. You see that 30% of first year matriculants have had paid clinical experience BUT you do not know what proportion of applicants had paid experience. For all we know, paid experience is both rare and highly desirable. The data you are providing don't tell us if that is the case or not.


@Kwhi9705 radiation tech takes one to two years of full-time training so that is a poor choice. Phlebotomist is a clinical role but it is very routine with minimal time with each patient. It isn't a job that is going to impress adcoms.

Frankly, rather than a clinical job per se, I'd encourage you to find work (if you need to work) in retail sales, hospitality or something similar that has you serving the public and dealing, sometimes, with their complaints. It is a good way to learn about human nature and to become comfortable dealing with upset and disgruntled people.

I'll disagree with my learned colleague here, because as someone who has done phlebotomy, I have a respect for other people who have done it. It's patient contact experience, and a physical one at that.
My own two cents is that we want you to have patient contact experience. Whether this is paid or not is up to you. But having work experience is good in my book, AND it's also important to show off your altruistic side.

So how do you do this? You can work in one venue, and volunteer in another.

I feel that all adcoms are human because of this.

 

[Planes2Doc]

I'm not a fan of entry-level clinical jobs. If you want to read my long take on the topic, check this out and look at *Meet Matt*.