Look into more specific info about volunteering expectations. It’s not just “outreach,” working with little kids/tutoring or the elderly. Just check the sorts of work other med school hopefuls do.
@twogirls I find it odd that you said it’s looked upon negatively to complete volunteer work abroad. I just read several articles mentioning how beneficial it could be because it teaches the student the true principles of health care equality? For example, I went abroad with my cc and we did assist the nurses by making packets, organizing paperwork, and signing patients in while in Ecuador. That doesn’t seem invasive or exploitive in my opinion.
There is a sticky thread at the top of this forum which explains why international service trips have come under an ethical cloud.
At the very least, the volunteers in your program may have displaced local workers from paying jobs. If you took all the monies that the program spent on getting you untrained volunteers to the site Ecuador (include not just travel costs, but program administration, infrastructure costs, etc), how many locals could have been hired to perform same function you did? What did the volunteers in your program do toward providing a long term solution to situation in Ecuador?
You can find all sorts of examples of healthcare inequality much closer to home than Ecuador. Healthcare quality & availability on Native American reservations in South Dakota, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, etc are just as bad or worse than anything you’ll find overseas.
Yes, some broad concern when US kids choose to go abroad for volunteering when there is so much need in our own backyards. Plenty of kids make the big trip and do little or nothing even locally, with healthcare.
And someone can tell me if they disagree, but admin support is not the same as dealing directly with the needy re: specific healthcare.
@WayOutWestMom I definitely see your point. It’s similar to what’s occurring in my state, actually. We have a major shortage of medical professionals which results in us accepting help from anywhere. When I say that it was hectic when we arrived there, they were sky high in documents and had many lost payments. Because of the disorganization, there were fights breaking out and it was just insane. We may not have had a major impact on the overall future of the health care system of Equador, but they needed free assistance and we were willing to provide it. Maybe because the locals are concerned with finding ways to feed their family and repair their homes that they cannot afford to work for free? We were responsible for covering our own room and board prices as well as the travel cost.
They didn’t need short term untrained help; they need permanent [paid] workers who will maintain some sort of continuity of service and record management.
When your group left, what happened then? Things went exactly back to the way they were before you arrived. In fact, it can be argued that by providing a temporary band-aid you actually made the situation worse long term because there’s no incentive to fix the actual problem.
Next time you want to help overseas, write a check for what you would have spent on the trip to a local non-profit organization or charity in the region. Seriously.
A volunteer I know was volunteering in a school in Kiberra. He asked the head of the school (an independent non-profit) what he could do to help. The principal told him that he had teachers; he didn’t need any more. What he really needed was pencils, paper and textbooks.
My lad had no problem with overseas trips on his applications. When in college he volunteered to help with a medical missions trip and did much of the busywork letting the nurses and doctors attend to the patients. When in med school he was actually used in the medical realm under the supervision of a doctor.
In high school my lads also went overseas on “helping” trips via a youth group they belonged to, but it wasn’t random. It was associated with a sister group over there and the folks who went were knowledgeable construction folks who assisted the people there teaching them (and the high schoolers) how to do everything from electricity to drywall. The specific people they helped were selected by the church over there. Tools were mostly left behind to be used by the local people with other projects afterward.
My lads also helped with hurricane recovery groups in the states and have gone to a sister church on an Indian reservation, but that last one is merely for intercultural exchange - no “work” actually needed or being done - just joining in to get to know people. It’s through our church and they keep the connection for more than just the trip.
Trips aren’t generically bad. URochester on their class profile says many (most?) students have been overseas doing something including volunteering. One can learn a lot. What is wrong is joining the “for profit” groups where it’s done more as tourism - perhaps painting the same school room with each group they bring over while the local people sit and twiddle their thumbs. That’s wrong in the states too.
The things that can be learned via travel outside the resorts and generic tourist areas are very worthwhile IME. Most come back having learned people are people everywhere (good, bad, and everything in between) and happiness/materialism aren’t connected.
This is the essay topic for UT Southwestern. I would assume most people go abroad when they are in Peace Corps.
Going abroad for Peace Corp is considered meaningful work. It’s not voluntourism.
Peace Corps are the opposite of short-term service trips for undergraduates, though. Three week for-profit missions can complement local year-long work or 2 years in a service corps (anywhere). But 1-week, 2-week, 3-week missions aren’t what med schools expect (no matter how personnally enriching they are for the students themselves, and thus it could tangentially help during the interview.)
But no one see PC as volun-tourism. And it’s immersion for 2 years.
How does it not eliminate local jobs?
For the medical trips my lad went on, they were assisting a local clinic where there is no doctor - just one nurse with very few supplies. Many donated supplies were left with the clinic afterward. People traveled for miles to have a chance to see the doctors - and on one of the larger trips, dentists and vision specialists too. Thousands of people.
No one is going to convince me these aren’t useful trips. They don’t cure all ills, but they definitely help real people. The young lass who wasn’t eating and one look told the doctor it was due to having rotten, infected molars in the back probably appreciated the trip. I agree it’d be best if they just had a doctor and dentist move in, but that hadn’t happened and isn’t likely to happen. Since everyone on the trip was a volunteer, they could only stay a short time. There are real jobs most needed to return to.
The most useless trip my lads have gone on was one to Baltimore (local city) where they helped work on an inner city house and the local (able bodied) folks were sitting around watching them or TV. When they’ve done work trips elsewhere or with hurricane relief the able bodied local folks who were there were pitching in learning just as much from the “experts” who came along as my lads did. In all cases the people being helped needed help (elderly, one set wheelchair bound), but when the local folks just sit and watch that’s irritating… my lads didn’t go on that type again.
I don’t think the trips your child went on were useless at all. Your child’s trip certainly seemed to help people.
I do, however, agree with the points brought out by WOWM. This is in line with the information that I read on the popular premed site.
It’s definitely a popular mindset among some - hence the counter I’m making.
And my counter isn’t a broadbrush support of these things. It’s showing there are worthy types - just investigate instead of painting with a broad brush.
The aid given without controls just disappears into people’s pockets. Irrespective of the motives of people who do voluntourism or volunteerism, whatever they do by going to those countries gives those countries exposure in terms of need. I find it quite ironic that most liberal schools promote these projects while some doctors in those same liberal schools are writing papers complaining about them!
The premed sites really stress the importance of doing this type of work in your own backyard…on the weekends, after work, etc. Peace Corp and similar programs are looked at favorably.
I personally believe in helping all people…including those abroad. Groups such as Doctors Without Borders, Dentistry Abroad programs etc do wonderful things. Kids going to Africa for a few weeks to deliver babies ( yes that happens) …eh…not good.
The premed site has a lot of information about these trips abroad.
@twogirls wow, undergrads delivering babies? That’s insane, and nothing similar to what I was doing or have done. I definitely believe that I had a minor positive impact on the village I visited. If they cannot afford to pay for employees and are in need of some extra hands, how can I be harming anyone by providing assistance? I’m not rich, as I’ve said and the best way that I can give back is through my time. However, we were required to make donations. I will make sure to note that none of the work that I completed was unethical, as I was not aware of that potentially being a thought. I don’t think stating that I provided assistance through an accredited program to underprivileged communities during their most chaotic seasons would be looked upon as negative. When these programs are supposed to help make us diverse candidates. I understand something such as helping build houses in Lisbon, Portugal for those who meet certain income criteria might not matter to med schools, even though it does show a bit a charitable character. But helping patients calm down when they’re not able to see a doctor for eight hours or when the clinic lost their payment and they needed their medicine; I helped locate their payment. Things like this do have a momentary impact, and I’m sure the patients won’t forget those acts of kindness. Just my opinion and personal experience.
I have no objection to meaningful and long term service missions. Both Peace Corp and Medicins San Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) do admirable work.
Both my daughters plan to volunteer with MSF as soon as they achieve the minimum required qualifications. I will note the minimum period of service that MSF will accept from a volunteer is 8 weeks*, with 9-12 months being preferred.
* and only for certain in-great-demand specialties: psychiatry, OB/GYN, surgery, and anesthesiology/nurse anesthetists.
But volunteers with both organizations do not attempt to supplant local workers and both organizations engage with the local stakeholders to find the issues that the local communities identify as needing assistance.
There are tons of clinical sites, inside the US and overseas, that are shorthanded. But flying 16-18 year old kids halfway around the world just to walk papers from one side of a clinical to the other just doesn’t make any kind of sense. (economic or otherwise)
Happens more often than you would think. Administering vaccinations and starting IV lines are other common activities.
While D1 was working as an AEMT in the township hospitals of South Africa (and likely because she was white and American), she was repeatedly asked if she wanted to assist during surgery (uh… no), do a spinal tap (definitely not), suture patients after surgery and suture lacs in the ER, intubate patients, debride infected wounds/burns, plus all sort of other invasive procedures. She was conscientious and refuse to engage in activities beyond her scope of training, but she was in the minority among the international volunteers at the hospital.