tofurkey,
I tried PM-ing you back, but your mailbox is full. I thought I'd share my response since though it is personal, it might help others in the same boat as well.
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Hey,
About volunteering, I had trouble also getting good hands-on patient care experience. It was only after getting my emt-b license that places would let me do things. It seems nurses are more receptive to letting you do patient care once they know you hold some sort of medical license and are professionally liable if you violate HIPPA (as opposed to not being liable generally as a volunteer).
With that said, I think if you can learn to take vital signs (BP, pulse, respiratory rate, temp), that can get you a little bit further then they would let someone w/o experience.
I just did my first day at Community Health today, which is a free clinic on Western and Chicago Ave. Contact them and you will get real good patient care experience. Today patients could only come to visit an RN to get refills, so I was responsible for looking over the patients' charts, bringing them into the room and conducting the initial questioning of current meds, taking a history, and then obtaining the vitals. I am sure if you express enough interest, they will eventually train you to do the same. Visit
www.communityhealth.org for contact info (Laura Michalski is the volunteer coordinator).
On the thread you started, someone suggested volunteering at Children's Memorial Hospital. I have heard good things about it also, but like other hospitals, they will probably not let you do direct patient care.
I know it must be tough for you since you are a post-bac and you don't have time to go back and get some sort of medical certificate or license, etc. I think the best route for you would be to shadow some physicians. If you don't know any, from other threads I have read on SDN, they say that just calling or writing to random physicians in the phonebook seems to work as many are willing to teach. That counts as "clinical experience" and is infinitely better at seeing what a doctor really does than the kinds of experience I am gaining at the free clinics. I hope to shadow a doctor soon though (by looking thru the phone book or asking my personal physician).
Your "volunteer" experience doesn't have to be health related, so you can do other things instead (soup kitchen, homeless shelter, etc.)
Tell me something though. Are you working while you are going to school as well? Also, what places have you already contacted?
I hope this helps seeing as how long of a response it was.
