what is volunteering/clinical experience?

[stat3113]

So from my understanding there are two crucial components of ECs: shadowing and volunteering/clinical experience. What exactly is volunteering supposed to entail? Just browsing websites of some local hospitals, it seems that most of the 'volunteer' opportunities are decidedly NOT clinical and might even verge on clerical.

Ideally, what kind of tasks are you doing as a volunteer at an ER or a hospital, etc?

Is it well-known that volunteers do very little clinical tasks? Will they ask you at an interview, 'How was your experience at X hospital?', and you say 'Well all I did was shuffle papers.'

Am I missing something here?

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[TheRealMD]

So from my understanding there are two crucial components of ECs: shadowing and volunteering/clinical experience. What exactly is volunteering supposed to entail? Just browsing websites of some local hospitals, it seems that most of the 'volunteer' opportunities are decidedly NOT clinical and might even verge on clerical.

Ideally, what kind of tasks are you doing as a volunteer at an ER or a hospital, etc?

Is it well-known that volunteers do very little clinical tasks? Will they ask you at an interview, 'How was your experience at X hospital?', and you say 'Well all I did was shuffle papers.'

Am I missing something here?

Volunteering is what you make of it. For example, I work in the ER and no where officially do I interact with patients besides transporting them. However, that doesn't really stop me from helping out a doc or nurse if they ask for it.

So no, don't say you shuffled papers. They know you shouldn't be holding hearts or anything but try to learn from what they're doing, and see if you can follow one around for a day. I think probably the best thing you can do is to actually know a doc and have him show you what it's like. That is what volunteering really gets you: contacts!

 

[emttim]

So from my understanding there are two crucial components of ECs: shadowing and volunteering/clinical experience. What exactly is volunteering supposed to entail? Just browsing websites of some local hospitals, it seems that most of the 'volunteer' opportunities are decidedly NOT clinical and might even verge on clerical.

Ideally, what kind of tasks are you doing as a volunteer at an ER or a hospital, etc?

Is it well-known that volunteers do very little clinical tasks? Will they ask you at an interview, 'How was your experience at X hospital?', and you say 'Well all I did was shuffle papers.'

Am I missing something here?

This is precisely why I recommend that people do the EMT route for both volly & clinical...kill two birds with one stone, especially since most hospital volunteer jobs /are/ completely clerical. I had my hospital volunteer director flat out tell me that volunteers are not allowed in any role in direct patient care because of fear of lawsuit.

You may also want to call up your local fire department or sheriff's office and see what kind of volunteer positions they have...maybe wilderness rescue, search & rescue, etc.

 

[anoobie]

What's EMT?

 

[da8s0859q]

What's EMT?

Emergency medical technician.

 

[stat3113]

A related question: Is there a commonly accepted minimum number of hours one should do of volunteering and/or shadowing in order to be competitive? (I'm assuming they're considered separate.)

Obviously, the more the better. But what is the minimum that looks decent when you list it on the AMCAS ? (and if its below this number, one shouldn't include it.)

 

[jochi1543]

I've heard on here that most applicants have around 200 hours clinical experience. It's not that hard to get...I had 300 from volunteering at a hospital 20 hours a week over the course of several months (was out of school at the time) and then another 400 from volunteering at a clinic for 3 years 3 hours weekly.

You should include even if it's *just* 20 hours, because they want to see that you HAVE had that experience.

 

[prmdbeach17]

I've volunteered at 2 hospitals for a year, one in the ER and one on all different departments and never have I done anything approaching clerical work. The closest I came to that was getting paper for a patient's mom to write on. It's all been patient interaction and some things you see in the ER are really cool...well for me, not exactly the patient...