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Hey guys, here's a blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago and I thought it might be good to share here as well. It's pretty basic and goes over why shadowing is important, how much to do etc. and finishes up with my opinion about how to go about doing it best. Enjoy.
shadowing: how to start and how to get the most out of your shadowing experiences
I get so excited about things that I can complete with confidence and 100% accuracy and adherence. Like those tasks that I can cross off a list and say with a surety that I did what I needed to do. I am motivated by activities or undertakings that are not subjective. When it came to applying for dental schools, I targeted the straight-forward sections of the application with devotion and dedication. GPA, DAT score and a personal statement are not the type of straight-forward that I am talking about. Unless you have a 4.0 and a 30, there is still more that you could have done. For those of you who are like me, a mere mortal, you may have a glaring A- or even a C+ on your transcript and that’s okay! Today is the day that we forget about those fun nights that led to bad grades and we target one of those areas that you can complete with 100% certainty: shadowing hours. All the discipline in the world may not get your sparkling 4.0 back, but with a little dedication you can hit that magic 100 hour mark that you should aim for when it comes to shadowing. Let’s get ready to cross that one off your list!
Before we get into the details of how to shadow and how to get the most out of it, let’s talk about some of the more basic questions you might have about the topic: Is it required? How much should I do? Who should I shadow? Why should I shadow?
Is it required?: The answer is, it really depends on the school that you are applying to. Some do not have a specific number of hours that you have to shadow while others do. From my experience, shadowing for about 100-150 hours should be enough to fulfill even the largest requirements and woo those with no requirement at all. Story time: A friend of mine who applied to schools the year before I did (and helped me a ton when I was applying!) had done only about 30 hours of shadowing. When I asked him about shadowing he told me that during one of his interviews he was asked if he was sure he wanted to be a dentist. He replied that, yes, he was sure, and that thanks to his shadowing he knew it was a good career path for him. The interviewer looked him in the eyes in disbelief and said, “your shadowing hours don’t even amount to a single work week.” Let’s just say that this is not the school that he is currently attending. Moral of the story: even if there is no requirement, you need shadowing hours, and a lot of them, to get into that school of your dreams.
How much should I do?: As I said above, aim for about 100-150. In my opinion, you can consider this a completion based assignment really. If you do about that much, you’re good. But doing more is not going to make you much more qualified and it certainly won’t make up for bad stats in other areas.
Who should I shadow?: We’ll get into the specifics of who you should choose to shadow a little later but as far as what type of dentist should you shadow, most schools require about 50 hours to be with the same general dentist. Why the same? It shows consistency. Why a general dentist? Well, let’s face it, we all go into school wanting to specialize but the majority of us won’t. For the other 50-70 hours you might shadow other general dentist or dabble in some of the specialties that interest you most.
Why should you shadow?: Apart from the fact that you pretty much have to if you want any chance of getting accepted to any school, you can also learn a lot, get ideas for things that you will implement in your own practice one day, build communication skills that will be important later on in your career (like the interview phase) and you will likely need a letter of recommendation from a dentist. So don’t burn bridges by flirting with the evilly seductive hygienist or the occasional McDreamy with your favorite accent who comes in for a filling.
If you’ve read my post that talks about why I decided to become a dentist, you know how passionate I am about shadowing and its role in making that all important career decision. “I walked out of that first shadowing experience energized and enthusiastic about a new career that I had never strongly considered before…” and I continue on gushing emotionally about how great shadowing is and how wonderful dentistry can be (and now you know why I’m alone and blogging at midnight on a Friday). But before you start shadowing make yourself one promise: commit to shadowing three different dentists for 3-4 hours each. After this amount of time spent shadowing as I suggest below, you can probably make an educated decision to continue shadowing and pursuing a career in dentistry or not.
Finally, here are two things that I want you to remember now and during your shadowing experiences. 1- Learn from the best to be the best and 2- Go the extra mile. Now let’s get started.
Selecting your first victim: I would say that the best scenario for shadowing a dentist is to shadow someone who you know and who is familiar with the community in which you will be doing most of your shadowing. This last part is extremely important and you will see why a little later. Do you still live near your family dentist? Do you have a friend, neighbor or someone from your church, sports team etc. who is a dentist in the area? If so, consider yourself lucky and skip to the next step. If not, you are in the same boat that I was in. I would suggest looking on Yelp, Google’s reviews, Healthgrades, Angie’s List, whatever you choose… in order to find the very best dentist possible, preferably one who is in a convenient location for you- you may be going back to see him or her for your 50 hours.
Making the contact (the awkward part!): If you’re like me, calling a dentist or a secretary at a dental office to set up a shadowing experience can be pretty uncomfortable, but don’t worry! Most dentists are more than willing to let you come into their office to see them work. If you know your first victim well this step may be easier and if you don’t know them at all, who cares if they say no! Pick up the phone and call their office. Talk to the secretary and kindly communicate that you are looking to learn more about the career of dentistry and you would like to come in and shadow at their office because it got such great reviews. Make sure to ask what you should wear, when you should arrive and if there are any other preferences that the doctor has for being shadowed (ex. where to stand). I would even ask to schedule your shadowing for a day with a little bit of variety if possible. Follow the secretaries instructions and you should be golden! There really is very little to worry about.
Shadow the best to be the best: This is the most critical part of your first shadowing experience and will pay great dividends for your next 3-4 hours of shadowing. Before you finish this appointment, find a time when no patients are around and tell this dentist that you really appreciate the fact that you were allowed to shadow there and you were really impressed by what you saw. Tell the doctor that you really want to see a variety of offices in your community to better understand dentistry and ask him who he thinks is the best dentist in the area (besides himself of course). Trust me, every area has its best dentists and I have seen that most doctors will agree on 3 or 4 who are the absolute best. Bingo, you have your next victim. And what will you do at the end of this next experience? You guessed it, you will ask this second dentist who he or she feels is the best dentist in your area and go to this third office for your third experience. Now you have 10-12 hours of shadowing under your belt and you’ve seen three of the best dentists that your community has to offer.
All that’s left is to pick the office that made you feel the most comfortable, the one that best matches the kind of practice you want to have when you graduate and the one that you feel most confident in being able to get a sweet sweet letter of recommendation out of. Go back to them for the bulk of your shadowing hours. After I selected that dentist I shared with him my goal of shadowing at this office for about 60 hours over the next few months and asked if that would be alright. He had no problem with it and was very helpful during my preparation to apply for school. He also wrote me a killer letter of recommendation. I know what you’re thinking, “How on earth would you know since the LORs are confidential!?” Well, when I applied for the ARMY I got to read them all. So pay attention when I publish my tips for getting LORs that will boost and not bust your application.
Extra Mile Points: Keeping the office happy, getting an excellent LOR and being the type of shadow that the office wants to have around.
1- I always went to shadow with a nice pen and a simple notebook. This helped me keep track of my hours and it gave me a place to write down ideas and things that I learned. It showed that I was serious about shadowing to learn and I wasn’t just jumping through hoops. I would also jot down questions that came up so that I could discuss them with the dentist at the most convenient time for him.
2- If you feel comfortable enough with the office, do what you can to give more than you receive! Offer to take out the garbage if you see that it is getting full, take a patient’s purse and jacket when she sits down into the chair, type in the numbers for the hygienist as she does perio charting, complete simple tasks like making bleach trays… Anything that you can do will improve the morale of the office when you walk through the door, it will give you brownie points that you can redeem for a positive LOR and it will provide you more experience that you can bring up in your personal statement or during interviews! If appropriate you might tell the dentist that you are willing to help out doing simple things around the office and let him know that he can feel free to ask you to do things as well.
3- Show gratitude frequently, especially as your end your shadowing. When you have finished your shadowing, at least write a card to the office telling them how grateful you are to have been a part of their team for a little while. I even planned a surprise with the assistance of a secretary at one of the offices and brought lunch for the office that day. There were only five people in the office, and I thought, I can spare 40 bucks to show this team how appreciative I am for all they did for me.
4- Ask intelligent questions at the right time. After a procedure for instance, when you have a moment alone with the dentist, ask him why he used a certain technique or what led him to make a particular decision. Ask him about the materials that he uses and the types of insurances his office accepts etc. Ask about his time in dental school and what he wished he would have known going in. If you think the dentist or hygienist will be okay with it, ask him or her to walk you through what they are doing on their patient during a particular procedure. Make sure to have at least a basic understanding of the procedures, policies etc. before asking so that you can carry on a somewhat intelligent conversation. In general, I found that dentists are thrilled to tell you about their work and their experiences if you are receptive and genuine and if the timing is right.
NOTE: Don’t always expect being punctual, dressed as you were told etc. to count as extra mile points. Those fall under the categories of “following basic directions” and “being somewhat responsible”. People just assume that you do those things for free by now.
BOOM! Mission accomplished. Cross shadowing off your list!
shadowing: how to start and how to get the most out of your shadowing experiences
I get so excited about things that I can complete with confidence and 100% accuracy and adherence. Like those tasks that I can cross off a list and say with a surety that I did what I needed to do. I am motivated by activities or undertakings that are not subjective. When it came to applying for dental schools, I targeted the straight-forward sections of the application with devotion and dedication. GPA, DAT score and a personal statement are not the type of straight-forward that I am talking about. Unless you have a 4.0 and a 30, there is still more that you could have done. For those of you who are like me, a mere mortal, you may have a glaring A- or even a C+ on your transcript and that’s okay! Today is the day that we forget about those fun nights that led to bad grades and we target one of those areas that you can complete with 100% certainty: shadowing hours. All the discipline in the world may not get your sparkling 4.0 back, but with a little dedication you can hit that magic 100 hour mark that you should aim for when it comes to shadowing. Let’s get ready to cross that one off your list!
Before we get into the details of how to shadow and how to get the most out of it, let’s talk about some of the more basic questions you might have about the topic: Is it required? How much should I do? Who should I shadow? Why should I shadow?
Is it required?: The answer is, it really depends on the school that you are applying to. Some do not have a specific number of hours that you have to shadow while others do. From my experience, shadowing for about 100-150 hours should be enough to fulfill even the largest requirements and woo those with no requirement at all. Story time: A friend of mine who applied to schools the year before I did (and helped me a ton when I was applying!) had done only about 30 hours of shadowing. When I asked him about shadowing he told me that during one of his interviews he was asked if he was sure he wanted to be a dentist. He replied that, yes, he was sure, and that thanks to his shadowing he knew it was a good career path for him. The interviewer looked him in the eyes in disbelief and said, “your shadowing hours don’t even amount to a single work week.” Let’s just say that this is not the school that he is currently attending. Moral of the story: even if there is no requirement, you need shadowing hours, and a lot of them, to get into that school of your dreams.
How much should I do?: As I said above, aim for about 100-150. In my opinion, you can consider this a completion based assignment really. If you do about that much, you’re good. But doing more is not going to make you much more qualified and it certainly won’t make up for bad stats in other areas.
Who should I shadow?: We’ll get into the specifics of who you should choose to shadow a little later but as far as what type of dentist should you shadow, most schools require about 50 hours to be with the same general dentist. Why the same? It shows consistency. Why a general dentist? Well, let’s face it, we all go into school wanting to specialize but the majority of us won’t. For the other 50-70 hours you might shadow other general dentist or dabble in some of the specialties that interest you most.
Why should you shadow?: Apart from the fact that you pretty much have to if you want any chance of getting accepted to any school, you can also learn a lot, get ideas for things that you will implement in your own practice one day, build communication skills that will be important later on in your career (like the interview phase) and you will likely need a letter of recommendation from a dentist. So don’t burn bridges by flirting with the evilly seductive hygienist or the occasional McDreamy with your favorite accent who comes in for a filling.
If you’ve read my post that talks about why I decided to become a dentist, you know how passionate I am about shadowing and its role in making that all important career decision. “I walked out of that first shadowing experience energized and enthusiastic about a new career that I had never strongly considered before…” and I continue on gushing emotionally about how great shadowing is and how wonderful dentistry can be (and now you know why I’m alone and blogging at midnight on a Friday). But before you start shadowing make yourself one promise: commit to shadowing three different dentists for 3-4 hours each. After this amount of time spent shadowing as I suggest below, you can probably make an educated decision to continue shadowing and pursuing a career in dentistry or not.
Finally, here are two things that I want you to remember now and during your shadowing experiences. 1- Learn from the best to be the best and 2- Go the extra mile. Now let’s get started.
Selecting your first victim: I would say that the best scenario for shadowing a dentist is to shadow someone who you know and who is familiar with the community in which you will be doing most of your shadowing. This last part is extremely important and you will see why a little later. Do you still live near your family dentist? Do you have a friend, neighbor or someone from your church, sports team etc. who is a dentist in the area? If so, consider yourself lucky and skip to the next step. If not, you are in the same boat that I was in. I would suggest looking on Yelp, Google’s reviews, Healthgrades, Angie’s List, whatever you choose… in order to find the very best dentist possible, preferably one who is in a convenient location for you- you may be going back to see him or her for your 50 hours.
Making the contact (the awkward part!): If you’re like me, calling a dentist or a secretary at a dental office to set up a shadowing experience can be pretty uncomfortable, but don’t worry! Most dentists are more than willing to let you come into their office to see them work. If you know your first victim well this step may be easier and if you don’t know them at all, who cares if they say no! Pick up the phone and call their office. Talk to the secretary and kindly communicate that you are looking to learn more about the career of dentistry and you would like to come in and shadow at their office because it got such great reviews. Make sure to ask what you should wear, when you should arrive and if there are any other preferences that the doctor has for being shadowed (ex. where to stand). I would even ask to schedule your shadowing for a day with a little bit of variety if possible. Follow the secretaries instructions and you should be golden! There really is very little to worry about.
Shadow the best to be the best: This is the most critical part of your first shadowing experience and will pay great dividends for your next 3-4 hours of shadowing. Before you finish this appointment, find a time when no patients are around and tell this dentist that you really appreciate the fact that you were allowed to shadow there and you were really impressed by what you saw. Tell the doctor that you really want to see a variety of offices in your community to better understand dentistry and ask him who he thinks is the best dentist in the area (besides himself of course). Trust me, every area has its best dentists and I have seen that most doctors will agree on 3 or 4 who are the absolute best. Bingo, you have your next victim. And what will you do at the end of this next experience? You guessed it, you will ask this second dentist who he or she feels is the best dentist in your area and go to this third office for your third experience. Now you have 10-12 hours of shadowing under your belt and you’ve seen three of the best dentists that your community has to offer.
All that’s left is to pick the office that made you feel the most comfortable, the one that best matches the kind of practice you want to have when you graduate and the one that you feel most confident in being able to get a sweet sweet letter of recommendation out of. Go back to them for the bulk of your shadowing hours. After I selected that dentist I shared with him my goal of shadowing at this office for about 60 hours over the next few months and asked if that would be alright. He had no problem with it and was very helpful during my preparation to apply for school. He also wrote me a killer letter of recommendation. I know what you’re thinking, “How on earth would you know since the LORs are confidential!?” Well, when I applied for the ARMY I got to read them all.
So pay attention when I publish my tips for getting LORs that will boost and not bust your application.
Extra Mile Points: Keeping the office happy, getting an excellent LOR and being the type of shadow that the office wants to have around.
1- I always went to shadow with a nice pen and a simple notebook. This helped me keep track of my hours and it gave me a place to write down ideas and things that I learned. It showed that I was serious about shadowing to learn and I wasn’t just jumping through hoops. I would also jot down questions that came up so that I could discuss them with the dentist at the most convenient time for him.
2- If you feel comfortable enough with the office, do what you can to give more than you receive! Offer to take out the garbage if you see that it is getting full, take a patient’s purse and jacket when she sits down into the chair, type in the numbers for the hygienist as she does perio charting, complete simple tasks like making bleach trays… Anything that you can do will improve the morale of the office when you walk through the door, it will give you brownie points that you can redeem for a positive LOR and it will provide you more experience that you can bring up in your personal statement or during interviews! If appropriate you might tell the dentist that you are willing to help out doing simple things around the office and let him know that he can feel free to ask you to do things as well.
3- Show gratitude frequently, especially as your end your shadowing. When you have finished your shadowing, at least write a card to the office telling them how grateful you are to have been a part of their team for a little while. I even planned a surprise with the assistance of a secretary at one of the offices and brought lunch for the office that day. There were only five people in the office, and I thought, I can spare 40 bucks to show this team how appreciative I am for all they did for me.
4- Ask intelligent questions at the right time. After a procedure for instance, when you have a moment alone with the dentist, ask him why he used a certain technique or what led him to make a particular decision. Ask him about the materials that he uses and the types of insurances his office accepts etc. Ask about his time in dental school and what he wished he would have known going in. If you think the dentist or hygienist will be okay with it, ask him or her to walk you through what they are doing on their patient during a particular procedure. Make sure to have at least a basic understanding of the procedures, policies etc. before asking so that you can carry on a somewhat intelligent conversation. In general, I found that dentists are thrilled to tell you about their work and their experiences if you are receptive and genuine and if the timing is right.
NOTE: Don’t always expect being punctual, dressed as you were told etc. to count as extra mile points. Those fall under the categories of “following basic directions” and “being somewhat responsible”. People just assume that you do those things for free by now.
BOOM! Mission accomplished. Cross shadowing off your list!
....ok, so I held the suction but still....
