So yesterday was a pretty awesome day.  I had an interview at St. Agnes hospital to be a volunteer.  I wound up being 45 minutes early because  planned on getting lost, so I literally waited in the parking lot for 15 minutes texting some of my friends, then deciding to go inside, only to wait 15 more minutes i n the volunteer office.   When it was finally time for my interview, they pretty much told me it wasn’t an interview, that it was more of a “we have paperwork we need you to set up and tell you what you need to do before you can start” session, which was a relief.  I was told that since I am interested in surgery I’m going to be down in the recovery wing of the hospital, scrubbing stretchers and restocking supplies on a regular basis, but that sometimes I would be shadowing a doctor and watching a major surgical procedure.  I was also told that if I wanted to, since I have a psychology background, I could switch and work with a psychiatrist and have patient contact with patients at risk for developing dilirium.

I’m really excited to sit in and watch a few surgeries because I am so undecided about my career path.  I hope this will rekindle my passions for medicine and give me some invaluable experience in applying for medical school.  My plan is to start out working with the surgical procedures and cleaning stretchers this semester, and then possibly during the winter or next year, moving on to get the patient contact with the psychiatrist.  This will give me experience in different fields and let me have the best of both worlds, for me personally and for med school applications.  I hate feeling as though this whole thing is mostly to figure out what I want to do with my life and make my med school application look better and to to help th hospital out and learn, but I suppose sometimes the selfless acts we do always come back to selfish motives…