So I’m 2 yrs out from applying and need/want to get some experience volunteering. I can sign up at my local hospital and from their website it appears they have you work the visitors or information desk. Is this the typical experience?
Should I be looking for some other type of volunteering experience?
Also, any perspective on what schools usually look for in the arena would be helpful.
Thanks!
See if the hospital uses volunteers scribes in the ER (which gives you quite a bit more clinical exposure). That seems to be a good gig if you can get it.
Kate
If there is a teaching hospital they might be more open to volunteers in clinical areas. I know the ones in my city also said no to clinical volunteering, but UofL said yes b/c they are a “teaching hospital”.
What part of KY are you in Joe?
Thanks! Will check out Univ. of Cincinnati which is not too far away, and of course, a teaching hospital.
I would also recommend looking into volunteering at a community/free clinic. I personally did not have that great of an experience volunteering at an ER of a big hospital (it was boring and I didn’t do much). But I had a great experience volunteering at a community clinic. I conducted initial medical history interviews (45-60 mins) one on one with patients and had opportunities to observe different clinicians.
Free clinics and teaching hospitals should be good places to volunteer. When I was in high school I was able to volunteer in the OR helping sterilizing tools (and if i got there early enough watching a surgery or 2). To this day I still love the smell of the autoclave…lol. Check with the hosptial to see what specific areas they allow volunteers. Also if you’re already enrolled somewhere doing your pre-reqs check to see your school already has some kind of internship/shadowing/volu nteer experience that you could participate in.
So UC let’s people volunteer in the ER. They said it’s working with the families who are waiting, but I’m hoping that I would get to observe things in action too.
One other question I had was how many hours do schools like to see? They usually do 4 hrs. a week and I am probably do that for about a year before I apply so ~200 hrs. Is that enough?