Hi, I am a rising junior in high school and am considering getting an EMT-B certification and then volunteer at my local fire department throughout Junior and Senior year. If anyone has done this before, how difficult is managing high school course load while being an EMT. I am also looking towards applying to BS/MD programs and was wondering if this was a good way to gain clinical experience or if it doesn’t impact your application significantly. I really want to gain valuable medical related experience beyond just discharging patients and clerical work at a hospital, what should I do? I would love to get anyones’ opinion and advice on BS/MD programs in general.
Getting your EMT-B cert and volunteer at your local fire dept is great. You should also do some volunteering at your local hospital and shadow some doctors to get a sense of why you want to do medicine.
@meddreams As you correctly noted, you are typically assigned/asked do clerical work while as a junior volunteer in a hospital setting, so if your local EMS/fire department takes junior volunteers prior to their EMT certification, you should definitely consider it as it offers you an opportunity of actual ‘patient care’ experience. I have seen quite few high school students riding ambulance at our local EMS squad while taking evening EMT class (~230 hours for EMT certification) during their junior year. Most of the time, they can study while waiting for calls in the squad building, then ride ambulance when calls come in. It’s manageable if you are an efficient student. GL.
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