Medical Malpractice

What is some volunteer work I can do in hospitals to help get into medical school.?

I am interested in getting into med school then eventually become a transplant surgeon. I am currently a Junior in highschool and figured it's never too early to start getting experience in the hospital or whatnot. I would like to start doing volunteer work in hospitals, but don't know what I would be allowed to do. If you have any experience with this please let me know

Public Comments

1. There are a lot of different things you can do, it depends on what opportunities are available at specific hospitals. A couple of examples: http://www.wellspan.org/body.cfm?id=322 http://www.mdanderson.org/departments/teenvolunteer/dIndex.cfm?pn=959890A7-6A49-419D-8FF4EA348599D6C7 So call or visit websites of hospitals you're interested in volunteering at and see if they have info on what work they offer for HS students.
2. Volunteering is noble...even if you have a reason to do it. However, I would say that there is nothing you can volunteer for that will help you get into medical school. With the liability laws the way they are now...you will basically have little to no contact with the patients. But, you will interact with those actually preforming these duties and you will be in a better position to decide if this is something that you really want to do. No offense but you are still very young...and you might change your mind several times before you settle on what you actually choose as a career. I am sure that you have your reasons. But, look at it from another view point. You not only want to be a doctor... a surgeon...and not just any type of surgeon a transplant surgeon...that is very specific. I hope your dreams work out for you...but, don't lose heart if they don't...there are many jobs that have to be done for a transplant to happen other than the surgeon.
3. god...... these places will let anyone help, they are desperate for students and ppl wanting experiance but not looking 4 a wage phone and write to all nursing homes and hospital wards that you are interested in, i'm sure lots of places will give you the chance. i would try this b4 going to med school anyway.. you dont know if your going to like it and it might not be everything you expected! so having that little bit of experience would be good 4 u. what age are you.. and i'll know what u could do.....!??
4. Wow! You are really ambitious to have such a goal to become a transplant surgeon :) Bless you. You may be able to volunteer at the local hospital as a 'junior volunteer' but as someone else mentioned, not really hands-on. The various departments may need office assistance which can include answering phones, filing and photocopying. Hospitals may also have a more patient, customer-oriented position such as an 'emergency room liaison' which can inform the patients' families of how everything is going and such. There may be a need for someone in the surgical waiting room to do something similar. Nursing homes/long-term care facilities may have more patient-oriented volunteer positions such as helping out the recreational therapist with arts and crafts of the residents and/or becoming a companion to one of the residents or even transporting residents to other departments within the facility. And volunteer work doesn't have to be limited to health care facilities but also mentoring a child, reading to a child that doesn't typically get read to otherwise or volunteering at the local helpline center as a telephone volunteer. Wishing you the best of luck! And perhaps you can get experience at a couple of different settings and acquire that much more experience just dealing with others and helping others. And I would certainly second the next postees comments about one's GPA and MCAT (medical college admissions test) score (along with letters of recommendations) as being key to getting into medical school though volunteering is a great way to get some real life experience as well.
5. The ONLY thing that will help you get into medical school is a strong GPA in high school AND college and scoring high on the MCAT. You do that, they'll welcome you. Working in hospitals moving charts around isn't going to help. Cleaning up stuff you'd rather not, leaky stuff, will make you see medicine in a 'wrong' light. There are SO many different specialties. You won't know what part you'll like till you walk there. In medical school you are exposed (clinical) to people who have all types of problems. Surgery is a whole game by itself. There's anatomy you learn in med school, then there's the 'surgical' anatomy you learn in the hospital, the emergency room, the battlefield. You may decide you don't LIKE people. They're NUTS, Don't want to handle that stuff anymore. So you become a radiologist or pathologist or nuclear medicine person who looks at the results of studies on people with different diseases and gives the surgeon or internist a diagnosis so he can decide which Rx will/won't work. The BEST thing you can do, is READ! Read everything. Learn everything. Learn history, learn a foreign language...no LEARN IT! In this country we've a huge Spanish speaking population...why don't YOU speak Spanish? Learn Business. As a physician you need to know business or you won't know how to run your own. (There's a reason I know this). Learn Philosophy, History, English, Literature...all that stuff NOW, so that later when you study science, you can just study science then. They'll give you ALL the science you could ever want in college and med school. (no really!) And for %^&&% sakes have fun. Meet as many people as you can. Date as many people as you can. Learn about all the different personalities out there. Taste the world. You do not have to taste all the drugs in the world, but as a physician you are going to meet all these people again (or someone just like them). I'll tell you where you are going. We go down to Mexico to a little clinic. At that clinic we do basic eye surgery. Cataracts, that stuff. 85 year old man comes in. He's blind. His great, great, (probably another great here) grandson helps him, guides him. We see that he's blind. Blind from cataracts. White pupils. So we take him to surgery. We remove the foggy lens and replace it with a little plastic one or silicone one or ? one that we have there. The next morning he comes to the clinic, led by his g-g-g-ggrandson. you slowly remove the patch. He opens that eye. You clean off the antibiotic ointment and he looks at you. He then looks around. He sees his grandson....for the first time. His greatgrandson..first time. His granddaughter, greatgranddaughter, his family...most...for the first time. He looks at you. How does he thank you for that? What can he say? what could anyone say? When you go home that night, you don't have any money. You didn't get paid any money. But you feel like the richest man in the world. Read!