high school students Shadow Physicians?

[MARK918]

I wasnt sure where to post this and i think i posted it somewhere else and im new to posting stuff on forums but anyways... I am going to be a sophomore in high school and am wondering if High School Students can shadow doctors in hospitals. If so, how should i go about finding a doctor to shadow? Do you have to already know a doctor and find out through them or can you just go to hospitals. Are there any hospitals in the Southern California area that are good to shadow at?

[El Nino]

I'm really confused by these post.

Yes, high school students can shadow docs

All you have to do is:

1. Search online or phone book for physicians in your area
2. Call the physician
3. Ask (if they say no, call another)

Or, just ask your current doc if you can shadow him/her or if he knows someone you could shadow

Simple

[Rendar5]

I'm kind of confused as to the purpose of high school students shadowing doctors?

[Crazyday]

Pretty much necessary if you hope to get into a BS/MD or any other type of combined program. It's also a way to sort of see what medicine is about from a first-hand point of view for interested students. I'm not a huge fan of it myself. I've learned a ton about medicine just by reading these forums and blogs over the last year, much more than I think I could from shadowing physicians and getting anecdotal accounts of what medicine is about from a few doctors in an isolated geographic region, but you can't really put that on an application so..

I'd ask your pediatrician if you can shadow him/her or if he/she knows any other physicians you could possibly shadow. My pediatrician offered this to me a couple years ago.

[LovinPsych]

Originally Posted by Rendar5

I'm kind of confused as to the purpose of high school students shadowing doctors?

Maybe they want to know if becoming or studying the health profession they're interested in is truly for them , it could help them determine whether they want to do it or not . There are some high school students who know what they want to be from the time they are in High School .

[Bacchus]

I understand this. But, this is what shadowing is for through college. If you stop shadowing after HS, it is frowned upon to include this activity on your medical school application. I also feel, from my shadowing experience I got more out of it as a college student than I would have as a high school student. I hadn't learned much by that point in time, but what I learned in aspects of physio and anatomy, I was able to apply it. I don't think you'd have enough knowledge as a HS student to do that.

Regardless, if you're going to do a short-term shadowing event, then I don't see the harm in doing it in HS to be exposed to the field.

[vasca]

I never shadowed at HS. I decided to give med school a try like 2 weeks AFTER graduating HS. Before then I had 0% interest in the field (yet I enjoy my job as an intern, ironic).

It may be useful to chit chat with doctors you know (family members or good friends), things are just different in Mexico for the reason that there is no such thing as Pre-med as such in this country. Medicine IS the undergraduate degree and you don't have to do a gazillion ECs to get into med school. Most of what you need is to have a decent HS grade average and to simply pass the admissions exam.

As a HS student you don't have the knowledge to understand what the doctors are talking about. From what I've been seeing on these forums, the level of difficulty of American HS is insanely low, mexican HS seems to be more in par with American undergrad.

[huskerdye]

If you want to shadow a physician in a hospital I would suggest callilng hr (human resources) at your local hospital. ALMOST all american hospitals will allow you to shadow their doctors so long as you go through there privacy training..

As mentioned before high school shadowing looks good if you try getting scholarships or into a BS/MD program.. It helped a lot to get in the program I was accepted into, which bascially guarantee's you a spot in medical school.

Good luck!

[runnerx93]

I wish I could. I think it'd be great to actually dig in and find out if this is the career path for me. I'm only a junior in High school (wow, still feel like a freshman, time flies ), but I'm a big planner and I pretty much have my life mapped out. Of course it'll change but its nice to have a goal. I have a close relative who is a radiologist, and I asked him about shadowing, but I guess where he works they only let interns/residents do that. Not high schoolers. I suppose I will just have to keep looking.

[Pepipanda]

One starting point is to check with your friends' parents. I haven't done any shadowing yet, but I'm setting something up with a family friend who is on the pediatric liver transplant team where I live. I'm also considering asking a friend's dad, who is a hand surgeon, or someone else who is a pediatric neurologist.

If you don't have friends' parents who are physicians, or don't want to ask them, another place to start is with your own pediatrician. I'm kicking myself right now for forgetting to ask mine when I had my last check-up.

Also, I've gotten a job at a lab this summer, one that is attached to a hospital (literally attached, as in just a few hallways away), and the person I'm working for has offered to set up some shadowing opportunities with people she knows in the hospital.

Finally, one the hospitals near where I live has a job shadow program open to high school juniors and older. It's once a month and you have to sign up 4 weeks in advance to get a slot. The opportunities are for a variety of hospital personnel, including physicians, nurses, rehabilitation people and more. It took some searching to find it on their website, but I'm thinking about trying that out this school year, so you can look for something like that.

If all else fails, then yeah, get out the phone book or start googling. I just feel that to be really awkward, asking somebody you have no connection to if you can follow them around for a day.

[MARK918]

Originally Posted by Pepipanda

One starting point is to check with your friends' parents. I haven't done any shadowing yet, but I'm setting something up with a family friend who is on the pediatric liver transplant team where I live. I'm also considering asking a friend's dad, who is a hand surgeon, or someone else who is a pediatric neurologist.

If you don't have friends' parents who are physicians, or don't want to ask them, another place to start is with your own pediatrician. I'm kicking myself right now for forgetting to ask mine when I had my last check-up.

Also, I've gotten a job at a lab this summer, one that is attached to a hospital (literally attached, as in just a few hallways away), and the person I'm working for has offered to set up some shadowing opportunities with people she knows in the hospital.

Finally, one the hospitals near where I live has a job shadow program open to high school juniors and older. It's once a month and you have to sign up 4 weeks in advance to get a slot. The opportunities are for a variety of hospital personnel, including physicians, nurses, rehabilitation people and more. It took some searching to find it on their website, but I'm thinking about trying that out this school year, so you can look for something like that.

If all else fails, then yeah, get out the phone book or start googling. I just feel that to be really awkward, asking somebody you have no connection to if you can follow them around for a day.

how did u find a job at a lab? ive been looking for jobs like this but havent been able to find any

[FutureCTDoc]

Shadowing in high school is as easy as finding a physician willing to take you under their wing. The best place to start probably is with your Primary Care Physician. Often times calling them up or writing them is the way to do it. Some may be less than willing, but many are more than happy enough to do it. When I applied to BS/MD and BS/DO programs I had approximately 250 hours of shadowing in ophthalmology in Vitreo-retinal surgery, medical retina and corneal refractive. I had scrubbed in on approximately 100 surgeries including cataracts, vitrectomies, phaco-kenalog peels and Phaco-IOLs. This was really helpful in interviews and I'm now NSU '13 NSU-COM '17. Shadowing was an integral part of my application, I wrote an essay that was described by one program (BS/DO) director "I just want to thank you for your application to St. Bonaventure! We are in the process of reviewing it this week. I just finished reading your essay about the AIDS patient you will never forget - I had goosebumps through the whole thing. I really admire your compassion and your desire to care for those who might not have anyone - or anything - else. I wish you the best of luck in the future!:" these kind of experiences are only found through doing shadowing. Depending on your experience you may also come along on consults, where the aforementioned essay comes from.

[mathlegend]

How did you find a doctor that was so willing??? Let you watch so many surgeries? Even let you scrub in?!?!?

[FutureCTDoc]

Originally Posted by mathlegend

How did you find a doctor that was so willing??? Let you watch so many surgeries? Even let you scrub in?!?!?

Certainly doesn't hurt when you're father is an ophthalmologist and you're observing his cases. In all seriousness most MD/DOs will do this assuming A) they feel you're worth the effort i.e. on the more "boring" clinical end you are attentive even when it's the 30th hypertensive, diabetic of the day B) they can get informed consent from the patients C) the surgery is in a place that can accommodate this i.e. best chances are for non-cosmetic electives, ophtho, ENT, pain management giving blocks and this is done in an ambulatory surgical center, they tend to be more accommodating. Although scrubbing in sounds "cool" you tend to learn more in office. When the cutting is being done no talking is allowed and depending on the set up viewing may be less than ideal. Where I am there is a TV hooked up to the operating microscope plus an assist scope. The biggest part of this is spending a lot of time in office beforehand I was in the office 100+ hours before my first scrub in and had gone on quite a few ICU/NICU consults. Consults are possibly the best learning experience, they tend to be A) Complex B) Interesting C) Great teaching moments i.e. in the isolation ward on a consult with a patient suffering from end-stage AIDS or ROP ruleouts, you learn bedside manner, complex disease management and you see interesting cases and there is usually only one or two patients to see meaning you can usually learn a fair amount on these as compared to your usual office visit.

[mathlegend]

Dang, pretty cool!

[oldguy55]

I'm a practicing anesthesiologist in a small community hospital. I saw this thread today because I was showing the SDN forum to the high-school student who is shadowing me. Today was her first day.

Her mother works in a doctor's office. My wife sees that physician and they got to talking... Next thing I know I've got a shadow.

Apparently every HS student in this county is required to do a project between JR and SR years, with 15 hours of job-shadowing as part of it. My student thinks she might want to be an anesthesiologist.

To tell you the truth, I think at this stage it's best just to find out what you might want to do with your life. I don't expect her to learn anything else this week. Maybe she'll see how much fun my job is and it will strenghten her desire to go into medicine, but there's so much time between now and then. So many things can change.

I think most physicians in my community would be happy to have a shadow for a while. We all like to talk about ourselves!

[Pepipanda]

Originally Posted by MARK918

how did u find a job at a lab? ive been looking for jobs like this but havent been able to find any

A college counselor at my school mentioned that a lab at the university occasionally took high schoolers for the summer. It turns out that the woman running that lab was someone I kind of knew. I sent her my resume (which I had to put together for the first time), and a personal statement about why I was interested. After talking it over with some of the other people working there, she had me visit one of their weekly group meetings. That was it. I started coming in on June 8, and have been working there since (excluding last week, when I was out of town).

[Pepipanda]

Yesterday, I shadowed a family friend who is a surgeon. I got to go into the OR, and, as long as I didn't touch anything sterile or get in the way, could stand right next to the patient. It was really cool, but also really long. They started at 8AM or so, and I left at 3PM, when they said they had about another hour to go.

I got this opportunity because I was somewhere with my mom and we ran into him and it was mentioned that I was interested in becoming a doctor, he offered to let me shadow him sometime. I called him a few weeks later and we met at his office the next day.

[lamp37]

what exactly does shadowing involve?

[Depakote]

Originally Posted by lamp37

what exactly does shadowing involve?

In general, you will follow the physician around and observe them as they go through their clinic or OR day. You will watch them see patients or perform surgery. If you have a question, you can ask them, although it's generally better to wait and not do this in front of an awake patient.