<p>I was wondering which looks better on a med school application, the scribe program or volunteering. Either way you are basically getting about the same amount of clinical exposure, the only difference is that with the scribe program you are getting paid. Do med schools prefer volunteering without any compensation?</p>
<p>There is no “vs.”, you should do both community service and experience clinical exposure if you can.</p>
<p>^Well, I think the question was, “If I’m going to be getting the same clinical exposure regardless, does it matter if I’m paid?”</p>
<p>If you can get a scribe job, I think you should do it. Might as well be paid!</p>
<p>But like Plum said, you need to have both community service and clinical exposure to be competitive for med school. Since the purpose of community service is basically to show adcoms that you care about your fellow man and that you’re willing to work selflessly for someone else’s benefit, you need to be doing something community service-oriented as opposed to working without pay for it to “count” as community service.</p>
<p>Eg: Volunteering at a nursing home playing cards with the residents “counts” as volunteering. Working as a lab tech and not getting paid (which some would call “volunteer work”) for a semester before you start doing research for that lab does not “count” as volunteering, but in my opinion it would count toward research.</p>
<p>Could someone define what “clinical exposure” is? I was thinking about volunteering at a hospital in the ED which would mean I wouldn’t take patient vitals or anything like that, but I would help around changing sheets, running errands, etc. Does this count as clinical exposure?</p>
<p>Scribbing will probably require you to work 20 hours or something whereas volunteering is only 3-4 hrs a week. Big time commitment difference between the two</p>
<p>OP, lizzym over on SDN has a pet definition for “clinical experience” that at one time was in her signature. </p>
<p>“If you can smell the patient, then it’s a clinical experience”</p>