Worth getting hospital experience now?

[GandalfTheWhite]

So I am applying this upcoming cycle and my hospital finally got around to approving my application, but since its already the end of april, I will have about a month of volunteering if I choose to do it.

I wanted to see if it was worth it to even do it ( roughly 50 hours by the time I submit).

I already have 1040 hours of clinical experience working at a doctor's office/ clinical research investigation site with daily patient contact.

I dont have much non-clinical volunteering ( about 100 hours at habitat from 2009-2011 during college)

any advice on this topic is appreciated!

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[sinombre]

Eh... schools won't really look at your app until you submit your secondary (with a few exceptions)... so you'll have more than a month under your belt, and more than that by the time you interview. Is most of your clinical experience in an outpatient setting? If so, it's probably worth it to get a sense of how drastically different it is to work in a hospital.

 

[Planes2Doc]

Ouch. Anecdotal evidence on this site shows that starting volunteering so late will end up looking like a last-ditch box-checking attempt. Sadly, people who have years of commitment doing the same activities are viewed as genuine, while those doing the activities close to application time are viewed as box-checkers with bad intentions.

I would probably continue with non-clinical volunteering, so you can lump it into one big thing, and add those hours that you did previously. This will put you over the arbitrary magical 100-150 hours number. Remember that non-SDN Cookie Cutters get in with a low number of hours. Having so much clinical experience definitely gives you an edge over them. Don't do clinical volunteering since you already have so much clinical experience anyway, and since it is separate from non-clinical volunteering, the number of hours will look meager.

EDIT: Sorry, a lack of sleep is getting to me. DO NOT DO ADDITIONAL HOSPITAL VOLUNTEERING. Do non-clinical to boost the hours of previous work. You're fine in the clinical experience department.

 

[NickNaylor]

Do it if you want to but I agree that you've got a pretty large amount of experience already. FWIW, the bulk of my experience came from an internship that I did the summer right before applying and I don't feel like that held me back.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[survivordo]

Only do it if you think you would enjoy it (this should be true of anything you do!). I don't think it is going change your chances much.

Survivor DO

 

[Barcu]

Some non-clinical experiences could help if you find something that interests you. More clinical experience is fine too if you are interested in it as well.

It is nice to have some on-going activities because it can give you some additional experiences for interviews and potential wait-list letters down the line without having to repeat stories.

 

[JohnFe]

Sorry to piggyback on your post, but I am in a similar situation but in terms of shadowing. My shadowing (60 hours) are 3 years old. I'm barely looking for places where I can shadow...Is this bad??

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

yea I was just trying to figure out if those 50 hours would make a noticeable difference..

I have about 60 hours of shadowing two doctors, so I figured i would rather improve in that area by shadowing other doctors and bring that up to 80 or 100.

Any ideas on what type of short term non-clinical volunteering I could do? Im moving to another city at the end of May so that poses a problem for the long term volunteering ideas.

 

[Planes2Doc]

yea I was just trying to figure out if those 50 hours would make a noticeable difference..

I have about 60 hours of shadowing two doctors, so I figured i would rather improve in that area by shadowing other doctors and bring that up to 80 or 100.

Any ideas on what type of short term non-clinical volunteering I could do? Im moving to another city at the end of May so that poses a problem for the long term volunteering ideas.

Can you do Habitat again to keep it consistent? That will probably look better since you stayed with the same organization.

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

Can you do Habitat again to keep it consistent? That will probably look better since you stayed with the same organization.

thats what my plan is. I've contacted them and I'm waiting on a reply.