Mix of shadowing and clinical experience

[doctorleospaceman]

Hey all. I'm one of those people who has been browsing these forums for a while but only now got around to making an account. This is a great community that has already been extremely helpful so much thanks.

Anyway, my question is does it pose a problem that I have an experience that is a mix of both clinical experience and shadowing? I've shadowed a pediatrician at a local family practice for the past 2 summers (500+ hrs), but I ended up doing much more than shadowing. I've done rounds at the NICU, and have also performed countless OVs from start to finish (obtaining hx from patients and parents, ROS, performing the physicals, and typing up the actual SOAP note and the occasional dx ) obviously under the physician's supervision and review.

It was an invaluable experience. I went into as much detail as I could on the ECs with the limited characters and one of my LOR is from the physician, but I'm worried that the fact that I don't have anything labeled as clinical experience (besides some 30 odd hours 3 years ago) might make my app a throw-away.

Will most adcoms understand that I do actually have a lot of clinical experience?

Thank you!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Spector1]

you could perhaps write about it under the "anything else" sections on the secondaries where you can talk about how your extensive clinical experience has been invaluable in driving you towards medicine.

 

[doctorleospaceman]

It's definitely in there since it is obviously one of the "memorable experiences", but I'm not sure about at a glance/if it's enough.

 

[GiveMeThatMD]

Definitely include the in-depth experience when submitting! I believe that the average applicant has ~50 physician shadowing hours, so having 10x the amount will DEFINITELY stick out in a crowd. You'd think there'd be some double-dip worthy work in there...

 

[Banco]

You could separate the 2 components into 2 different "activities" for AMCAS purposes, and split the hours as well. Meaning you can have Activity 1 = Shadowing with 200 hours and then Activity 2 = Volunteering/hands on experience with the rest of the hours.

 

[Rainbow Zebra]

Hey all. I'm one of those people who has been browsing these forums for a while but only now got around to making an account. This is a great community that has already been extremely helpful so much thanks.

Anyway, my question is does it pose a problem that I have an experience that is a mix of both clinical experience and shadowing? I've shadowed a pediatrician at a local family practice for the past 2 summers (500+ hrs), but I ended up doing much more than shadowing. I've done rounds at the NICU, and have also performed countless OVs from start to finish (obtaining hx from patients and parents, ROS, performing the physicals, administering vaccines and typing up the actual SOAP note and the occasional dx ) obviously under the physician's supervision and review.

It was an invaluable experience. I went into as much detail as I could on the ECs with the limited characters and one of my LOR is from the physician, but I'm worried that the fact that I don't have anything labeled as clinical experience (besides some 30 odd hours 3 years ago) might make my app a throw-away.

Will most adcoms understand that I do actually have a lot of clinical experience?

Thank you!

I'm curious about the performing the physicals and administering vaccines. What training and certification do you have to do this?? Performing services without certifications is a big no-no and a huge red flag. I assume you have some type of MA certification??

 

[nwts]

I'm curious about the performing the physicals and administering vaccines. What training and certification do you have to do this?? Performing services without certifications is a big no-no and a huge red flag. I assume you have some type of MA certification??

I'm curious about this as well. If you don't have any training, I wouldn't talk about those parts of it (physicals and vaccines) in your application because, as stated above, that's a big red flag. If you do have training, however, then you might want to separate these into two activities. A little bit of "helping" the doctor (asking a question or two of the patient, helping them carry things, etc.) can be a part of shadowing, but if you're really doing much at all in the way of patient care, that's beyond just shadowing.

 

[doctorleospaceman]

The MD still does the actual physical and all the documentation. With both the patient's and parent's consent (unbiased since they are asked before I walk into the room) I just go through the same stuff and then the MD critiques. That's how learning happens.

 

[nwts]

The MD still does the actual physical and all the documentation. With both the patient's and parent's consent (unbiased since they are asked before I walk into the room) I just go through the same stuff and then the MD critiques. That's how learning happens.

I hope the last sentence of your post is not an indication that you felt like I was telling you that you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. It sounds like what you're doing is totally fine. I was just worried because there are some students who do things that a physician tells them they are allowed to do, but they're actually not allowed to do those things. This is not a knock on those students at all. They should be able to trust the physicians to know what the students are allowed to do and only permit the students to do what they're allowed to do. However, even though I don't fault those students at all for doing things a doctor told them they could do, those students still shouldn't mention those things in their applications because it is not a good idea to run around announcing that you did things that you weren't supposed to do, even if you didn't know that you weren't supposed to do them. I was worried that this may have been the case for you, and I didn't want you to write something in your application that you thought was a good thing, but was actually a bad thing. Again, it sounds like what you did was totally fine. I just want you to know that my intent was not to attack you, just to help you.

 

[takeurmeds02]

Anything that you are not legally allowed or certified to do, I wouldn't mention it. Rather, I would colorfully mention those experiences as "observation". Otherwise, it makes you look dishonest and an opportunist in that you'll break the rules to get ahead.