Well, at 33 years old I finally decided to go for it. I still have a long ways to go though. Just wondering about prior health care expirence… I was a medic in the army for 5 years, but I got out in 2009. After that my first son was born. I completed my bachelors in 2010 and went to grad school right after. While I was going to school I did volunteer with hospice ( I did it just caused I liked it… I didn’t need if for anything)… but once I completed grad school (2013) i didn’t have any time to volunteer so I stopped (masters in social work, first job was child welfare… where basically if I wasn’t sleeping I was working). After doing that for a year I got a job with the community mental health center as a crisis therapist. I spend a lot of time in the er… and consult with med providers… but it’s all specific to mental health. It’s hard to do any other volunteer stuff cause I do still work a lot of hours. You think working mental health in medical facility counts as work expirence?
I actually would love to hear responses to this, as I am a therapist in a community mental health center as well. 
I am starting my pre-reqs in a week and a half.
Greetings,
Just read your post. Longtime OPM lurker and really leaned on this site heavily when I was applying. Just started my 4th year of med school.
I was exactly the same age as you when I applied, so don’t let the age factor deter you, even though you may get some flak for that during the application process and interviews (I sure did, but that’s a story for another time). I think the most important thing is not necessarily WHAT you’ve been doing, but to be able to tell your “story” effectively. Between your lengthy experience as a 68W (if that was your MOS) and what you are doing now, I’m sure you have a TON to offer and a lot to tell about how you reached the decision to pursue medicine. That can really work for you, particularly when compared with people who are coming straight out of college and essentially have only been professional students for their whole life.
Assuming AMCAS has not changed, things don’t need to “qualify” per se as work experience. You just list your work experiences and describe what your duties were. When you write the personal statement and particularly essays for secondaries (and also during interviews) is your chance to describe what those experiences meant to you, why they were substantive, and how they affected your decision to pursue medicine. So I wouldn’t worry so much about whether a particular experience is “good enough.” Just my $0.02 worth, if that, even–YMMV.
Happy to discuss further if you have any questions. Hope all’s well!
OWH
Thanks for the replies. Nice to see a fellow community therapist too! =) I was a 68w… except when I first started I was a 91w… (They changed the number sometime when I got back from deployment). The “urge” has always been there for me… but when I got out, I thought I would be satisfied as long as I was helping people… and with all the frequent moves I had to find something I could finish before moving again… and also close enough so I could commute (as it was, I was already commuting one hour for grad school… the medical school was 2 hours away… being new in the area with a baby… and my husband being gone made even the one hour commute difficult)… so I went for social work. And the truth is I do help people and really do enjoy my job… but, ugh,… that little “urge” never went away.
I’d recommend still trying to shadow some physicians to show both you and adcoms that you understand exactly what you’re getting yourself into. There is a difference between working with/around docs and actually seeing what the docs really do.
Your background is definitely a big plus though. We just finished our psych block, and there seems to be a medical-community understanding that the capacity for non-psychs to recognize and treat psych disorders is greatly lacking. Even if you don’t want to go into psychiatry, your background can be leveraged to show that you have the potential to fill a major gap in healthcare.
Re: shadowing. I’d definitely second that–it’s a must, because interviewers/app readers want to know that you know what medicine entails in this day and age and that you accept the challenges that it presents. Have you had a chance to do any?
Re: mental health worker shortage…it’s real, and acute. That’s why you see so many PCP’s starting people on SSRIs for MDD, GAD, etc. and managing them. Even though the lack of PCPs is what seems to get a lot of press these days, the lac of MHW’s and general surgeons is just as, if not more, pressing an issue, particularly in rural areas.