Help! Work experience & voluntary work for medicine

[crazy8]

My DD achieved very high marks in her GCSE's. She wants to go into medicine and is doing Maths, physics, chemistry and biology at A Level. We need help as neither of us know what sort of work experience or voluntary work the medical schools look for. Please help!

Marking my place. DS is the same. I'm probably a little ahead of you in that I understand work experience/volunteering in any field is probably useful, but the nearer to medicine the better obv...Its what they get from it.

eg working in charity shop shows team work, people skill dealing with the public and the ability to turn up for your shift on time regularly so is some use.

Serving teas in an EPH/learning disbility home etc- caring /teamwork/timekeeping etc. Communicating with people generally.

Paid ward orderly work (is this even open to 16yr olds ? ) clearly would be great.As would work experience with a GP etc

St John's ambulance? A lot of my med school friends did this.

To stand the best chance it needs to be relevant - best bet is the local hospital - there may be a regular volunteers programme for assisted patient feeding, for example. Other good ones would be volunteering at a hospice. Both of thes regularly done by students in my DCs' schools.

Plus formal work experience week organised by the hospital too - a week shadowing a doctor.

You need to speak to the volunteers coordinator at eh hospital, or if that doesn't exist as a post, then the HR dept would be able to help you.

Hospitals take volunteers from 16.

Have a look at some of the university websites, they usually list the skills required such as here

At DD1's school they have a medic club where the kids can pass on contacts etc. At DD2's school a boy who got into Cambridge came to do a talk and was able to pass on his contacts etc. Ask the head of year/careers dept at school.

Look on the Student Room website loads of ideas, experiences on there.

Hospice or Care Home volunteering. It's easier to get, and you can do it for an extended period of time, which is useful. Actually, I'm pretty sure at least one medical school require applicants to have done something continuously for a certain amount of months

Shadow a GP, or shadow a doctor in a hospital (I shadowed a pathologist for two days). Most people seemed to organise that themselves

Some hospitals do special weeek or so long schemes for year 12's

Anything which helps with communication skills (charity shop etc)

Student Room has good stuff on there. Didn't get any advice through school

Thanks everyone. That's great. She is currently doing her Duke of Edingburgh sliver award and does quite a bit of volunteering with that. Hopefully she will go onto to do the gold award and will also continue with more volunteering. Also will suggest she contacts local hospitals for work experience.

Carry on with the D of E- that is a really good one to have on the personal statement. You learn a lot about yourself and team working from being up mountains etc.

Just done a ring round for DS this am. Many places wont even contemplate volunteers under 18 (tried the mega hospital and also local hospice).

It can be very tricky to get work experience in hospitals, due to confidentiality, age, popularity etc. You're much more likely to get it if you know someone working there who can put you in touch with people, get asking round friends/family and see if anyone might be able to help out.

Old people's homes can be good, shows an ability to relate to older people and a willingness to do something a bit less glamorous Also just volunteering generally.

St John's Ambulance and Red Cross also good places to try.

There's lots of information generally on Student Room

How about GP surgery? They may be willing to arrange a short period of shadowing. This is what I did a long time ago in a very rural place (no hospital existed to be placed at). It was quite unusual and made me stand out from the crowd.

I also worked a paid holiday job in an old peoples home just cleaning and making teas mainly. It was very relevant to communicating with elderly, confused people which is a core skill I am still using to this day.

My local teaching hospital has a formal, centralised work experience scheme that you apply for and I gather is very oversubscribed but there are also district general hospitals, community hospitals and mental health trusts which probably don't get so many enquiries and may be very willing to take someone.

Hi, my ds is at a similar stage and we have found it impossible so far to get clinical experience. My pct does not allow them to shadow at GP anymore.
My ds has also been turned down or not heard back from a number of hospitals.

My ds does do lots of volunteer work so hoping that will stand him in good stead.

My DD did one week of work experience with our GP. She wasn't allowed to shadow the doctor but she did sit in with the nurse when she was giving vaccinations. She said it was good getting to talk to the practice nurse and admin staff. I wasn't sure what medical schools look for when it comes to experience. She found it impossible to find a hospital willing to allow her to shadow a doctor but we put it down to the fact she was only 16!

my daughter has just qualified as a doctor,she did work experience in an old folks home, in a hospital, not shadowing a doctor but a nurse, helping with the menial tasks. this seemed to put her in good stead for med school interviews.

DS found it difficult through Y11 and 12 to find work experience. He spent a week in a care home during Y11, attended the week long access course at the local hospital in Y12 (had to write a short ps, detail his grades etc.) and also spent a couple of days with a microbiologist at the local hospital having e-mailed cold to ask if he could. He did no long term volunteering in a care home or hospice. But the local GP surgeries had different policies: ours doesn't take its own patients (as they might know the patients being treated) and the one in the nearest town only takes its own patients (too much demand for places). So he didn't have a whole lot.

His interviews nevertheless worked around it: his interest in Medicine was fairly demonstrable from his PS and he was quizzed on those things. And different questions were asked about different things he's done beyond work experience to test his people skills/ team working skills etc.

Medical schools do seem to understand the difficulties some students have finding work experience and do seem to be very ready to use other things to try and tease out whether an applicant has the appropriate skills.

It does depend on the trusts so much. In the town where i teach the local trust has a well organised w/exp programme, but will only take kids who live in the town/surrounding area. This makes it hard for students in the next (very large) town down where the trusts do not permit any work exp under the age of 18.
Next town south again has a well organised work exp programme - so some of it is down to chance.
Think most mental health trusts are even harder to get experience in due to the sensitive nature of many of their clients.