<p>Hospital volunteering is horrendously boring.
Although, this might just be my particular hospital, on my particular floor (ICU), during my particular shift. The work doesn't bother -it's the lack there of. I work for 4, seeming long and grueling hours. Only seemingly because of how not busy I am. I am quickly dismissed when I offer my services to the nurses and my job duties are very simple (understandably so since I have no formal training/licensing). I basically beg for work because I am not going to waste my time sitting around doing nothing when I could be doing something else more productive. In all honesty, I'd love to quit and volunteer elsewhere. I already have clinical experience as I work for a spine clinic. I volunteered at a hospital because A) I heard that's what pre-meds do and B) because I wanted to observe a doc's day in a hospital setting and compare/contrast it with the private practice setting. Reason A is probably a dumb reason. Reason B is ideally what I wanted to get out of volunteering. However, I feel completely unproductive and bored and reason B does not seem sufficient enough to carry me through 4 hours of slow work. So my question is this (although I think I already know the answer): if I quit, will this be a hindrance to me being accepted to med school. I think not, but what do I know? If I quit, I plan to become more involved with my church (volunteering with children with special needs, outreach to the homeless, international missions, etc). SO, thoughts?</p>
<p>Find some other place with patients to volunteer regularly. Try a nursing home.</p>
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<p>DS also had very little work to do when he volunteered in a recovery room. Wait, he did have some work to do: tutoring a nurse’s child on chemistry. He was not quickly dismissed by the nurse/mom. Actually, it was just the opposite: he could not easily get away from that nurse to do some real volunteering work, which is not much to begin with. (What did he say about it at that time? She almost like jumped on him when he showed up volunteering there. – If only he has ever had such a luck with a girl of his comparable age. He has had no such luck in his whole life :)) The nurse would finish the work assigned to him as quickly as possible so that he could spend more time with her high school child on school work. (It was during the summer and somehow her child volunteered in that hospital also.)</p>
<p>Luckily, his second experience in the oncology department is much more meaningful. For some reason, the hospital can afford a coordinator whose job (at least part of her job) is to manage these volunteering students. She assigned volunteering students meaningful jobs. He had much more patient contacts there. (I think it is also because he himself is more mature this time.)</p>
<p>Yeah I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with a bad experience in hospital volunteering. I’ll probably write the coordinator a letter regarding resignation or transfer. Leaning more so towards the former. Anyone care to share their volunteer stories? My main concern is that not volunteering at a hospital would put me at a disadvantage come med school application time. Although if med schools are truly looking for diversity, I feel as though not volunteering at a hospital for 150 hours would stick out, not really sure for better or worse. I’d just rather spend my time elsewhere where it’s not so slow, and where I can be kept busy.</p>