I'm also a physician, did my residency in NYC, and volunteered as a medical aid tent physician at the NYC Marathon for several years while I lived there. I was told by my residency program director that being there was an honor and would boost my applications for competitive fellowships. So, I traded in are weekend days off, often times after being on call overnight, to schlep it at the tents.
In retrospect, we should have been paid. It's a very high volume mass event, and both the waystation tents and finishers' tents are full of casualties. I worked myself into the ground on those weekends, managing athletes with syncope, heat exhaustion, cramps, electrolyte disturbances, dehydration, bronchoconstriction, you name it.
The more I work in this field, the more I see just how much medical workers are exploited--it's easy to take advantage of a group of largely high achieving, people pleaser types who want to help. NYC is also a pretty ruthless place. I'd never willingly go back there to live/work.
